


One More Time

by marshmallons



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drama & Romance, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, M/M, Mutual Pining, Prideshipping, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-05-21 06:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14910497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marshmallons/pseuds/marshmallons
Summary: Atem is a software engineering college student, paying his way through college by working as a part time personal-shopper in an upscale clothing department. Seto Kaiba meets him through sheer misfortune and can't get the thoughts about his stylish, leather-clad derrière out of his head. Throwing money at his problem doesn't seem to solve it either.[AU, Prideshipping, Rated M for sexual themes.]





	1. Chapter 1

The dry cleaning emergency had ruined Kaiba's plans for an entire afternoon. 

An accident at Kaiba Corp. involving a misplaced wet floor sign, a secretary in dangerously high-heeled pumps, and a pot of freshly brewed coffee had not ended well for Kaiba's pristine white coat. 

But although Kaiba's coat had been stained beyond rescue and his chest was tender to the touch after the scalding, he had certainly enjoyed a moment of sick satisfaction when everyone on the floor fell silent and waited his reaction with bated, fearful breath. He hadn't reacted visibly beyond his lips tightening into a fine, pained line, but the productivity levels were substantially higher after he wordlessly shed his coat, dumped it onto his secretary's desk with the unspoken command — _take this to be dry cleaned_ — and turned around to go back into his office. 

Now, Kaiba stands impatiently in the elevator, waiting for the slow ascent to the fourth floor personal shopping service. His signature coats were uniquely hand-crafted and tailored to fit perfectly to his body, but for the company dinner party later that evening, in which he would meet with potential international clients, he would need a temporary, quickly-attained replacement suit. 

Kaiba shudders. _Off the rack._

The soft _ding_ of the elevator brings him back to the present and he steps onto colorful, lush carpeting. The interior of the personal shopping salon is elegant, if not unimaginative, and Kaiba expects the employee behind the counter to be an elderly woman with aged, silvery-spun hair and stylish glasses, but to his surprise, a young man stands behind the counter instead. 

He's dressed fashionably enough, but not as expected— he's skipped right over the standard business-garb and is dressed in layers of tight black all over. Kaiba does a double-take and thinks _holy fuck, leather pants._

A thin, well-groomed eyebrow raises at him inquisitively, and Kaiba remembers that he has stopped in the middle of the hallway. He hastily moves forward, reaches the service desk in a matter of four long footsteps, and tries not to stare too obviously as he checks out the man's distinct features up close. 

It's not appropriate, but he finds his eyes drawn to his small mouth, those soft, pillowy lips. He's not the type of person to take appearances into account— not because they don't matter, but because he just doesn't _care_. But he takes in everything about this man's appearance because they're there and _demand_ to be looked upon and admired. His eyes, wide and framed in in smudgy black kohl, are such a deep blue that they're nearly violet, and when he turns the full force of that gaze onto Kaiba, he finds himself mentally reeling. 

He's not particularly concerned that he finds another _man_ attractive; he's more appalled to find himself attracted to anyone at all. When was the last time that had happened? He tries to think, but a slow sweep of long, dark lashes distracts him from completing the thought — _Kisara, fourth grade_ — and his brain temporarily short-wires. 

_Nobody's talked yet._

The handsome man behind the counter wrinkles his brow and tilts his head to the side with a small, puzzled smile. 

"How can I help you?" 

His voice, low and molten, is entirely unexpected. It doesn't entirely match his pretty face and delicate features.

Kaiba refuses to acknowledge how much he likes it anyway. 

"I was scheduled for an appointment. I need formalwear," he says bluntly, and watches recognition flash across his jewel-like eyes. His eyebrows draw into a frown and Kaiba wonders for the first time if he really is too blunt and off-putting, as he's frequently told. 

_Well, too bad_. 

"Ah, you must be Seto Kaiba. Yes, I was asked to cancel all other appointments for the evening in order to attend to you."

The wrinkle disappears from between his brows and he steps away from the desk, gesturing for Kaiba to step forward into the parlor with a thin smile. 

"Please call me Atem. What type of formalwear do you have in mind?"

Kaiba is all-too familiar to towering over most people, but he's surprised to register that Atem is more than a full foot shorter than him. Something about his posture, the way he stood upright, regal and prideful, makes his presence far more imposing than his actual height. 

"A fitted tux. Simple, clean lines, preferably white."

Atem looks over his shoulder and raises one eyebrow. He can feel the judgment rolling off him in waves. "A white tuxedo?" 

"Yes."

Atem stares at him unfathomably, with just the faintest hint of a smile at the corners of his lips, looks him thoroughly up and down and thinks for a moment, before holding up a manicured fingered. Golden bangles clink around his slender wrist.

"Just one moment. I have something for you to try on." 

Kaiba waits, watches him turn and walk toward the main floor, finds his eyes drawn to the sway of those narrow hips and legs. Atem walks with elegant posture and effortless, fluid grace— mesmerizing, provocative. His gaze follows the enticing curve of his ass until it sashays out of eyesight. 

It's going to be a long afternoon.

* * *

It's not long before Atem reappears with a navy jacket in a clear garment bag and irritation floods over him.

_Is it so difficult to follow instructions?_

Fuming silently, Kaiba tries to keep a neutral expression, but his lips twitch into a grimace and he looks on with displeasure. That's clearly not what he had instructed. It's not even a tuxedo.

Atem catches his glare and smiles knowingly. Kaiba's mood fouls just a bit more. 

Before he could voice his irritation, Atem presses the fine wool suit into his hands. "I know it's not what you asked for, but I really think this will _suit_ you better than a white tuxedo."

The word play doesn't skip unnoticed, but Kaiba doesn't remark on it. He sighs his assent and when takes the garment by the hanger, he's briefly stunned by Atem's winning smile. 

That alone is enough to make him want to clear the room quickly. 

Kaiba closes himself into the spacious fitting room, spartan and fitted with floor-to-ceiling trifold mirrors, and sags against the dark oak door. He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, tall and spindly, and scowls at his reflection's dark eyes and faintly flushed cheeks. 

_Get a grip_ , he thinks scornfully, and unclenches his jaw once he becomes aware of the pulsing tension in his face. Atem isn't the first pretty face to smile at him that way, but he's certainly the first one capable of worming his way so thoroughly beneath Kaiba's skin. 

Viciously, he yanks the suit out of the garment bag and stares at the navy, near-black wool suit with contempt. There's no way that Atem could know how to dress him better than he dresses himself, and though the navy jacket certainly isn't an eyesore, it doesn't jump at him. 

A rapt knock on the door startles him and the door opens a crack just as he turns. 

"Sorry, Mr. Kaiba, but I forgot to give you this as well," Atem says, without sounding the least bit apologetic, and thrusts in a black turtleneck on a coat hanger. 

Is it just his imagination, or did Atem subtly look him over, as if expecting to find him in some state of undress? Kaiba takes the sweater without response.

 _Cashmere_ , he registers distantly, feels the fine quality of the soft knitwear beneath his fingertips. He can see Atem's face disappear in mirror —he hears the door close with a quiet click, hears receding footfall— and he begins to undress. His body moves and registers sensations on autopilot, but his mind is racing and he's acutely aware of the blood rushing in his veins and gathering on his cheeks and the dull, heavy thud of his heart in his chest, which eerily matches the sound of Atem's footsteps. 

He jams the turtleneck over his head with a little more force and frustration than necessary.

The cashmere is soft to the touch and fleecy against his skin, fitted like a second-skin, and the roll of the collar falls just beneath his chin, framing his flushed face. He owns an entire drawer full of identical sweaters in varying shades and textures, but he suddenly wonders whether Atem works on commission, and thinks that if that's the case, he wouldn't mind adding another turtleneck to his abundant collection. 

The coat he's more critical toward. He could understand why Atem chose the jacket. The wide lapels would flatter his broad shoulders and the tapered waist should fit proportionately against his tall frame. _YSL_ , black and navy, leather detailing. It's elegant outerwear, but it's not what he had wanted, and he's nothing if not _stubborn_ , goddamnit. 

He shrugs it on anyway, surprised by the snug fit and comfortable weight of it. He stares at his reflection in the mirror, inspecting his appearance critically, but the suit Atem picked out fit him well and only needed minor tailoring at the wrists. The high-rise collar hides the long hair at the nape of his neck, hides that he's long overdue for a haircut. The leather detailing on the collar especially pleases him, catches the attention and satisfies his flair for the dramatic, and he's surprised to find himself thinking that maybe, just _maybe_ , Atem had made a good call.

It's not often that someone gets the better of him. _Impressive_.

Kaiba steps outside and presents himself to Atem, who looks at him just as critically as he had stared at himself just minutes earlier, before his heavily-lidded gaze softens with admiration. There's something about the easy, upturned set of his mouth and the gleam in his eyes that stir something inside him and he uneasily wonders _are these butterflies?_ and does his best to swallow them down. 

"This really was made for you," Atem says sincerely, and Kaiba's heart stops entirely when he reaches out to pick off a tiny tendril of lint from the lapel with delicate fingers. Atem's eyes are dark and lidded and knowing and it makes Kaiba want to scowl. His hand lingers on his chest for just brief moment, but it feels like an eternity before smooths his fingers down the sleek wool.

Kaiba hardly dares to breathe.

Smiling, damn near smirking, Atem looks up at him from beneath his dark lashes. "Perfect fit."

He drops his hand and continues casually, as though he hadn't just given the most powerful CEO in the city an entire wave of heart palpitations. "I think gloves would complement the leather trim. Would you like me to show you our glove collection?"

Kaiba doesn't have the heart to tell him he hates gloves, despises the feeling of his hands being trapped within any form of fabric, and that most gloves don't properly fit his long-fingered hands well anyway. When he nods dumbly, Atem claps his hands together and he's struck by the musical jingle of his golden bracelets bouncing off one another, a pretty accent to his golden skin. 

Atem leads the way to a glass display case, casually chattering about the quality and durability of the latest leather gloves, but every word flies over Kaiba's head and he's inattentive, more interested in watching the elegant motions of his gestures than the products he's pointing toward. 

"...more fitted, but I think these match the leather detailing on the jacket a lot better," Atem says, and brings out a sleek dark pair from their velvety casing.

 _Talk more, say something_ , Kaiba thinks furiously, but he can't think of anything to say. He's good at barking orders and demanding things to be done his way, but he's incapable of casual conversation with anyone who isn't Mokuba or Isono. 

"Those are...nice," he says lamely, but it's enough. Atem beams at him and before he could add anything to that, Atem is reaching for his hand and fitting the glove over it himself. 

Soft skin, gentle fingers, steady, confident, steady movements. Electrifying.

Kaiba is aghast. 

He's terrified.

"O-Oh!"

He jerks his hand back by instinct. Atem's eyes are wide, startled by the unexpected reaction, and his mouth parts in surprise. 

Kaiba tries to ignore the brief look of hurt that crosses Atem's features before he could carefully hide it behind a neutral, professional mask. He says nothing, but his polite smile is frozen, thin; it doesn't meet his eyes like it did before, and Kaiba dislikes it immediately. But the moment is ruined. Atem draws back, his hands fall to the counter of the glass display case, and his face takes on a indifferent, blank expression. 

"I'll take them," Kaiba says hastily, and removes the glove so that Atem could wrap them in their proper packaging. His fingers brush the back of his hand, but Atem doesn't look up at him. 

Damage control. He's skilled in it; made an art form of smoothing over incidents and malfunctions. But this isn't the same as issuing a statement about faulty technology or dismissing legal rumors. He can't use his authority as a corporate magnate to smooth things over, not this time. 

He can feel his heart pulsing in his chest, feels the disappointment washing over him in waves when Atem only smiles faintly and nods. He's careful not to brush their fingers together again when he takes the gloves and silent when he packages them into a velvety pouch and white, ribboned box. 

The silence bothers him. He wishes that it didn't, but it does. It stings, it feels like rejection, and he chastizes himself, thinks that he's the one who spurned Atem, if only by pure reflex. 

"Is there anything else I can help you with?" Atem asks, and Kaiba mutely shakes his head, bitterly disappointed and annoyed by the impersonal, polite tone of his voice. 

He pays for his items in silence, doesn’t flinch or even blink when he Atem rings up a six-figure sum, and misses the wistful, longing smile Atem gives him when he waves goodbye.

He's never going back there again.

* * *

He's in a sour mood at the gala. 

He's well-aware that it's in his best interests to smile politely and to play up the role of a hard-working, young entrepreneur, particularly among the crowd of new investors, but he can feel the pretentious finery and idle chatter grating at his nerves. His patience is wearing thin. He hadn't even wanted to come to the event in the first place. 

Kaiba holds a champagne flute by the delicate stem and sips from it every so often. His expression, he's sure, is enough to ward off anyone from striking small talk, and not for the first time, he's relieved that his gangly height and stern features are intimidating enough to grant him personal space in such overwhelmingly public events. 

From most, at least. 

"Seto! Oh my dear Kaiba-boy, you look just absolutely delectable!"

Kaiba's mood fouls. The swig of crisp champagne in his mouth abruptly tastes dry and sour. He turns on heel slowly, reluctantly.

"Pegasus."

He’s painfully used to the older man’s antics and histrionics, but Pegasus' lilting laughter never fails to bring him to his last frayed nerve. Gritting his jaw, he turns slowly, reluctantly. 

"Why the long face, my dear boy? It's been ages since I've last seen you at one of these affairs."

"And yet it hasn't been long enough," he says dryly, with sincere disdain. He has to repress the visceral urge to claw his own eardrums out when Pegasus laughs buoyantly again. 

"Ever the asocial recluse. You never change, my dear boy. Except just this once I see that you've finally pulled yourself into a sophisticated get-up!” He clicks his tongue chidingly. “Although that scowl of yours...always a scowl and never a smile! That ugly thing certainly doesn't match the rest of your _splended_ appearance." 

Kaiba blinks blankly, at a loss and unsure what Pegasus is going on about, until he stretches out a manicured hand to touch the leather trim at his collar. He stiffens involuntarily and his thoughts immediately turn to Atem. He had made a stylish choice after all. 

"Finally, our beloved Seto Kaiba looked into a mirror before making a public presentation," Pegasus croons, and Kaiba bristles. 

"Rich—" He's not unaware that they both perfectly suit the apt description. "—coming from a man dressed from head to toe in an outdated satin-finish three-piece."

“You _must _tell me where you found yourself such a stylish little ensemble,” Pegasus says, ignoring the bait, and Kaiba clenches his jaw until his teeth ache.__

____

After years of working with the insufferable older businessman and witnessing his eccentric whims and behaviors, his juvenile, professional admiration of Pegasus had transformed into contempt and poorly-veiled aversion. 

__

He has to remind himself to relax his white-knuckled grip on the delicate stem of the glass in his hand.

__

“You expect me to remember every single place I buy a stylish outfit? I’m too busy running a successful company to waste my time paying attention to such useless things,” he says sharply. 

__

Pegasus’ eyes twinkle, as though it was the exactly the answer he had been anticipating. 

__

“Kaiba, my boy, I’m sure you’ll learn that fashion is a crucial component in the business world. Nobody would ever take you seriously if you looked like a common street urchin!” 

__

A twitch forms in his left eye. “I already know that. My _stylish sensibilities_ —" The words drip with sarcasm. "—are exactly what landed me into this conversation with you.” 

__

Pegasus' sly smile broadens. “But you see, Kaiba-boy, I’m not convinced they’re entirely all yours! I’ve never paid enough attention to you because you're normally _dull_ , my dear boy, like an unpolished diamond. But tonight you caught my eye the moment you walked through the door! Certainly someone else has to be credited for your fashionable success?” 

__

Atem. 

__

An image of his face appears in Kaiba’s mind. He can feel his cheeks heating up, as if someone had struck a match beneath his face. The room suddenly feels two degrees warmer, and he shifts on his feet unsteadily. 

__

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he spits out. But even he can hear the doubt in his own voice and knows that Pegasus will leap upon it. 

__

A curious, unfathomable expression passes briefly over his face, and Kaiba thinks he sees a hint of a smile at the corners of his lips, but it’s gone before he could be sure. 

__

“You look better than ever, Seto. You're not fooling _me_. Be sure to pass along my information to your stylist,” he says smugly, and Kaiba rolls his eyes so far back he feels tension building above his eyelids. 

__

_Fuck off_ , he thinks viciously, but forces a stony smile and squeezes Pegasus’ hand tighter than necessary when they shake hands. Pegasus reciprocates by holding his hand longer than appropriate and subtly swiping his thumb over his knuckles. 

__

Glowering, Kaiba snatches his hand back and moodily waits for Pegasus to leave. When the older man continues to stand in place, a thoughtful, contemplative look on his face, Kaiba's eyes narrow and he looks at him with obvious distrust.

__

"What?" 

__

It's not a question, its a statement, and he briefly hopes that Pegasus won't waste his time with an answer, but he's met with no such luck. Pegasus' eyes sparkle and he steps forward in his excitement. 

__

"Kaiba, my boy, I have a business proposition for you—"

__

"No."

__

"Just hear me out, Seto—"

__

"I don't need to. I have no interest in any business with you, Pegasus." 

__

Pegasus' gaze darkens and his cool, frivolous demeanor slips off like a mask. Beneath it, his eyes are dark and intense and his mouth tightens into a thin, frustrated line. 

__

"This is in your best interest, Seto," he says sharply. "I would suggest that you consider my proposition closely." 

__

Kaiba turns a steely glare over to Pegasus and arrogantly, definitively tilts his chin up. "I've already considered it as much as I had to. The answer is _no_." 

__

Pegasus looks visibly angry. His hair, already manic, gathers around his face like a silvery cluster of storm clouds, clearly predicting trouble brewing on the horizon. 

__

"If you don't agree to my terms now, there will come a day when you _will_ , and the cost you pay will be double."

__

With his back to the majority of the people in the room, Pegasus is able to hide the sullen scowl on his face and his voice is a silent, slippery hiss, far too low for anyone who isn't in immediate vicinity to hear. To everyone else, it looks like a pleasant conversation between two well-acquainted business tycoons. Only Kaiba can see the furious, threatening glint in his eyes and the thin, downturned line of his mouth. 

__

He throws his head back and laughs.

__

"Keep your pathetic attempts at coercion to yourself, Pegasus. There's nothing you can leverage over me and Kaiba Corp's future ventures will have nothing to do with Industrial Illusions! Don't ever bother me on the subject again."

__

* * *

__

Mokuba is asleep by the time he returns home from the gala, and only Isono remains among the staff at night to greet him, but Kaiba dismisses him with a tired wave of his hand. The house is eerily silent besides the sound of his own footsteps echoing throughout the massive halls. Kaiba's eyelids are heavy and his feet drag as he trudges wearily up the staircase to his private bedroom, and it takes all the effort he could muster to force himself into the bathroom for a quick shower before bed. 

__

Inside the steamy bathroom, his head falls to his chest and he feels the tension release from his shoulders beneath the spray of near-boiling water. Kaiba tips his head back, allows the water to trickle down his forehead and sweep his hair off his brow, and closes his eyes. 

__

It had been a confusing, exhausting day. 

__

Atem's smoldering gaze flashes behind Kaiba's closed eyes. He vividly remembers the bright flash of his teeth when he smiled and the wrinkle in his nose when he laughed. 

__

Annoyed, he pushes a hand through his wet hair and presses it to his temple, where he can feel the first stirrings of a headache. 

__

_What is it about Atem that makes it impossible to stop thinking about him?_

__

He doesn't have a single clue, but he can't remember the last time his mind was so singularly preoccupied by someone other than himself, his company, or Mokuba. 

__

Moving purely out of habit, Kaiba reaches for shampoo and washes himself, comforted by the familiar scent of lemon and bergamot. He loses track of the time he's standing beneath the sprays of hot water, until his skin becomes pink and the pads of his fingers are wrinkled, prune-like. 

__

Shaking back his damp hair, he wrings the excess water out from his hair, idly makes a mental note to schedule a haircut, and towels himself dry. 

__

The clock on his nightstand reads 1:46 in the morning. It's late and his body aches with an exhaustion that always seems to seep from his very bones, but he doesn't immediately fall in between the luxurious comfort of high-count sheets. His attention is stolen by the jacket he had left haphazardly thrown across the foot of his bed.

__

A cool droplet of water falls onto his naked shoulder and uncomfortably rolls down his back, like a fine caress from an incorporeal hand. Kaiba ignores the strange sensation and looks down at the suit, spreading it out neatly on the white background of his bedsheets. An odd rush of emotions washes over him.

__

_It suits you_ , Atem had said. Judging by the looks he had received all night at the gala, it would appear that everyone else had agreed with his assessment. He had certainly attracted plenty of attention from men and women alike during the state dinner. 

__

At the moment, he only craves one particular man's attention. 

__

It’s just a _mild_ infatuation, but it’s the strongest form of desire he’s felt in so long, and it’s for something he can’t have within his grasp in the time it takes to snap his fingers. Relationships —business, interpersonal, or otherwise— are all complicated and as intensely as he might have a _crush_ —he finally acknowledges it with a distinct sense of disgust— it’s not something he _can_ work toward when his hands are so full with obligations to his own brother, his company, and the business projects he's worked so hard to secure. 

__

_Out of sight, out of mind_ , he thinks, and smooths his fingers over the neatly folded lapels with a sigh. He hangs the jacket onto a wooden coat hanger slowly, almost regretfully, and swings the door to the closet shut. 

__

He's closed the door to the closet and to all thoughts of Atem. 

__

That’s enough of that.

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special thanks goes to my super super dear friend, uglifish ♡ 
> 
> [Kaiba's jacket.](http://www.soletopia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/slim-fit-suit-belt-collar-patrick-bateman-gloves.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Kaiba can’t get Atem out of his thoughts the entire morning.

It’s irrational and senseless, he’s well aware, but he can’t bring himself to snap out of the wistful memory of meeting Atem and reading into every look, every glance, and especially the brief touch of their fingers. It's been two entire days since he formed this meaningless, strangely intense crush, but Atem occupies his every other thought. By eleven am he’s desperate to banish every thought and memory of him from his mind. 

Lunch is a bland affair.

Kaiba rarely bothers eating in the afternoon, favoring coffee over food for the sake of convenience. The spreadsheet listing anticipated expenses and schedules for his pending project blurs on the monitor in front of him and he sinks his full weight back into his padded swivel-chair. He works idly, skimming product reviews, checking his email, and reading the latest employee complaints, until he's cleared through the majority of backlogged information on his computer and once again has time to let his mind stray from the work in front of him. 

For the umpteenth time that morning alone, his mind wanders toward Atem and frustration boils under his skin. 

Why the fuck can't he stop thinking about him?

Kaiba absentmindedly fidgets a pen between his fingers. 

It’s a crush, and it’s a foolish one at that, he realizes scornfully and tries to scold himself into thinking straight. 

_You don’t know the first thing about him_ , he reminds himself, but much to his dismay, he finds that he’s not discouraged— on the contrary, it makes him want to pry and discover everything about him. With the power he holds over the city, it wouldn't be difficult. Kaiba Corp provides the technology used in the city street cams to provide surveillance and monitor any dangerous or criminal behavior. It wouldn't be difficult to access the street cam mainframe and apply a facial identification program to the video feeds in order to investigate Atem's daily life. 

Easy to accomplish, difficult to justify, potentially illegal, if not entirely unethical. 

Who cares. 

Kaiba briefly toys with the idea, even opens the program on his desktop and begins to access camera feeds, before he abruptly remembers that he promised Mokuba he would be home early. He looks to the clock on his desk and curses under his breath. 

"Shit."

He needs to go _now_.

With a frustrated click, he exits out of the program. He’ll save that for another day.

* * *

The next two days pass uneventfully. The routine carries on as it normally does — long, busy days, short, restless nights, but it's interrupted by frequent, fleeting thoughts about Atem.

Each time he thinks about Atem, his stomach contorts painfully and his heart thumps just a little harder, just a little faster in his chest, and his brow breaks out in a feverish sweat. He could have sworn he was falling ill, but a preliminary check of his temperature and vitals proved otherwise. 

It makes him more irritable than usual, and even Mokuba picks up on his strange behavior — when Kaiba had poked his head into his room at the crack of dawn to say goodbye that morning, Mokuba had sleepily reached a hand out to his forehead and murmured a request that he stay in to rest. 

But he's not sick, and after agonizing all morning, Kaiba finds himself heading back to the high-end boutique in the center of the Domino City shopping mall. Making the deliberate decision to see Atem again had been like admitting defeat to an opponent he should have easily trounced. He's prideful and reluctant to go, and he had even considered turning tail halfway through the car ride from his office to the boutique, but the curiosity eats away at him and compels him to go through with it anyway. 

Just one visit, one little purchase for the sake of having an excuse to see Atem, and he'll realize that his  
crush was brief and fleeting and that his imagination had definitely gotten carried away in fantasizing over him. 

When he spots the discrete flash of a cellphone camera in the periphery of his vision, he grits his teeth and walks faster, hands are curled in fists and hidden away in the pockets of his trench coat. 

Stepping outside into the public is always an uncomfortable experience because he's always acutely aware of the attention he grabs as one of the city's minor celebrities. He had hoped that the normally-quiet hour just after twelve, after the lunch rush when workers should be back in their offices, would allow him a bit of privacy. 

Obviously, he would not be so lucky. He sees a few more camera flashes as he quickly treks to the upscale shop where Atem works, but he ignores them, strangely excited by the prospect of being so close to the source of his obsessive thoughts for the last three days.

It's only when he's in the elevator, leaning against the metallic wall and ignoring the faint dizziness that always accompanies an ascent, that he realizes he has no clue whether or not Atem is working. He would be so pissed if he had cleared his schedule for an entire afternoon in vain. 

His head spins as the elevator ascends, jolts, and comes to a sudden stop. The faint pulsing behind his eyes barely comes to a stop before his own pulse jumps erratically and heat floods his face. 

The sliding doors open to reveal Atem standing behind the desk at the end of the long corridor, leaning casually against the desk with his chin cupped in his palm. From this distance, Kaiba can't see his expression, but he can see the sudden shift in his posture, the casual roll of his shoulders as he brings himself to his full height, when he becomes aware of someone else's presence in the room. 

Kaiba approaches the reception desk and stares down the man standing behind the counter. 

Big eyes, dramatic eyeliner, delicate, full lips. Unbelievably short stature and regal posture. A mess of stylishly untamed hair. It’s him.

Atem blinks up at him with the wide, heavily-lined garnet eyes that haunted Kaiba each time he closed his eyes. His clothing remains just as unconventional, if not outright unprofessional, as it had been the last time he had seen him, but Kaiba can't imagine anyone criticizing the gorgeous creature in front of him.

He's fitted in a sleeveless black hoodie which exposes arms that look surprisingly strong, and Kaiba is completely taken aback— and a little disconcerted when his mind produces an image of his naked torso, equally lean and taut, beneath his sweater. 

_Where the fuck did that thought come from?_

"Mr. Kaiba." Atem says his name hollowly, more of a question than an address. His baritone voice is rough and mellow with disuse. "I wasn't expecting you."

Kaiba wouldn't be surprised if he's disappointed to see him again after the abrupt, awkward ending to their last encounter. 

"You do accept walk-ins, don't you?" he tries to joke, but his voice is rough and abrasive as ever. His words, intended as a joke, sound more like a bark, and the unused muscles of his cheeks freeze halfway into a smile. 

Atem isn't put off. He matches Kaiba's awkward grimace with his own cool, nonplussed smile and tilts his head to the side cutely. 

"I don't think I have a choice in the matter. You're our highest-paying client," Atem says doubtfully, with enough sincerity to be charming, and laughs. 

He's leaning onto the counter on his palms, eyes wide and earnest, and the smile on his mouth —it's _so_ difficult not to stare at his mouth— convinces him that Atem might even be pleased to see him. 

Kaiba licks his own lips, subconsciously mirroring Atem. He doesn't miss the way Atem's eyes drop to follow the subtle movement. 

"If you can show me something I like, I'll buy it," he challenges, raising his chin haughtily and looking down at Atem with heavily-lidded eyes.

_I'm already looking at something I like._

The thought of offering to buy Atem —certainly possible, he knows well enough— is both amusing and pathetic.

Mostly pathetic. 

Atem's eyes flash, widening with excitement. His interest is clearly piqued by the challenge, and Kaiba knows instinctively that he's not the sort to back down from anything. Atem looks him over from head to toe, sizing him up with absolutely zero subtlety, eyes gleaming. The intensity of his gaze sends a heated shudder rolling down his spine. 

"Well, what can I help you find this time, Mr. Kaiba?" _Atem says his name breathily, plump lips forming the words perfectly, and Kaiba wills himself with extreme difficulty not to become hard._

__

"I need casual workwear," he lies, after a brief struggle to remember the question. 

"I'm sure I can find something suitable for you. After all, I _did_ save you from quite the sartorial mishap," Atem says coyly, and the sly smile on his lips suggests that he's amused by a private joke. Kaiba gets the distinct impression that Atem is laughing at him, and he knows at once exactly what he's referring to.

"I need casual workwear _and_ a white tuxedo," he shoots back heatedly, and to his immense pleasure, Atem laughs. It's low and just a little breathy and he could swear that goosebumps broke out along his arms. 

"White tuxedos don't seem to go hand-in-hand with casual workwear," Atem points out, grinning. “Not with anything else.” 

He can't retaliate with anything other than a scowl. 

Fifteen minutes later, he's standing in the same sprawling fitting room from before, once again pleasantly surprised by Atem's choice in clothing. 

He never would have guessed that a leather-clad, jewelry-dripping fashion disaster could be capable of choosing the perfect crisp-white oxford polo with fine navy embroidery detailing. The tight gray pants — _jeggings_ , he thinks disdainfully— flatter his legs. He looks lean and taut, even a little muscular, and less spindly and pinched than usual. It's another far-cry from his usual black ensemble, but it _works_ and he thinks that maybe Atem has to be credited just a bit more than he had originally anticipated. 

"So, what do you think?" 

Kaiba turns to the source of noise behind him and sees Atem leaning against the doorframe.

He sounds smug. His lips curl into a knowing smile and he answers his own question before Kaiba could open his mouth. “ _I_ think you look great. Don't you agree?"

Kaiba hears the challenge in Atem's voice and releases a bark of laughter. 

He's been backed into a wall. He can't disagree without it blowing up in his face, so he turns up his nose and arrogantly says, "Whatever. I don't need you to tell me what I already know."

"A simple thank you would also suffice."

"Then _thank you_ , Atem—" He sees a nearly imperceptible shudder pass over Atem when he says his name slowly, deliberately, savoring it on his tongue. "—for telling me what I already know." 

Atem's sarcastic smile develops into a full-blown smirk, and Kaiba finds himself smiling back tentatively. 

If he had had any doubts before, he doesn't now. Yeah, those are definitely butterflies in his stomach.

* * *

Kaiba drives home in a daze. 

A monstrous pile of bags sits beside him in the passenger seat of the red sportscar, evidence of an afternoon spent in the company of his very own personal shopper. The dimming sunset casts a halo over the city skyline and the golden glow of the streetlights blur into a pleasant haze as he drives outside the boundaries of the city, where the streets are quiet, less crowded, and he could allow himself to edge the engine on and drive faster than allowed within Domino.

Music plays quietly in the background, streaming out from expensive bass boosters. The vibrating thump of a trap beat and a deep voice rhythmically spitting out fast-paced lyrics, just loud enough to be distracting, but the only thing on his mind is the sound of Atem's laugh, playing on continuous, maddening loop. Kaiba taps his index finger on the steering wheel along to the the music, what little of it he pays attention to, but his mind is entirely elsewhere.

Time flies while he's lost in thought and he's surprised when he sees the familiar sight of the mansion looming on the horizon. It's an intrusion on his thoughts, and as he approaches the gated driveway, he's mildly disappointed that his dreamlike drive was cut short so abruptly. 

Pulling into the garage, he looks up at the facade of the house and from the corner of his periphery he spots a flash of movement at one of the upper-story windows. 

A familiar mop of dark hair appears between the parted velvet curtains, just barely tall enough to be visible over the window's ledge, and a rare smile twitches at the corners of his mouth. 

He doesn't bother properly parking the Ferrari in the garage, knowing that someone on his team of household staff will take care of it, and he crosses the lawn with brisk footsteps. 

Once he's opened the front door and stepped inside, it doesn't take long —he counts down from ten in the back of his mind and barely reaches six— before he hears Mokuba's footsteps racing down the stairwell. 

"Seto!" he cries, and without even a moment's hesitation, he hurls himself from the bottom step at Kaiba and clings to his back. 

_He's getting heavier_ , Kaiba notes, but his hands instinctively drop to the backs of Mokuba's knees to support his weight without complaint.

"Hey kid," he says fondly, and turns the corner to see Isono approaching the foyer. A look of distress immediately crosses over his features and Kaiba can hear the reprimand coming before Isono even opens his mouth. 

"Mr. Mokuba, that's most undignified," he scolds nervously, reaching his hands out helplessly as if to keep either of them from falling forward. "One of these days you're going to hurt Master Kaiba."

Mokuba shoots back, "Seto can take it!"

But he listens and drops down from Kaiba's back. 

"Isono, there are some purchases sitting in the passenger seat of my car." Kaiba tosses the keys to the Ferrari at Isono and finds it cruelly amusing when he fumbles to catch them. "Take them to my bedroom and leave them at the foot of my desk. I'll see to organizing them myself."

Mokuba makes a face. "You went shopping? But you hate shopping."

Kaiba doesn't answer, but Mokuba chases him when he walks toward the kitchen and nosily pursues the subject. "What did you go shopping for, Seto? I thought Isono always did that stuff for you." 

The determined tone of his voice indicates he's not going to put the subject to rest until he receives an answer, so Kaiba thinks on his feet and struggles for an answer that's close enough to the truth. It has to be a lie so insignificant and inconsequential that there's no reason Mokuba shouldn't believe him.

"I should be the one to do it. After all, the clothing is going on my body," he says carelessly, and he's not exactly lying — he's just not disclosing the full information. 

Mokuba doesn't _need_ to know about Atem— admitting he has a crush to himself is one thing, but admitting it out loud to another living, breathing human being is another. 

That would make it a little too real. 

Mokuba shrugs, easily convinced and even more easily bored by the topic, and drops his interrogation in favor of following close at Kaiba's heels, talking a mile a minute about how he's _ravenous_ and how he had _totally_ managed to ace the test on polynomial functions just like Seto had said he would.

"Good work," Kaiba says sincerely, and out of the corner of his eyes he sees Mokuba's beaming. 

"Thanks, big bro! How was work today?" 

"Busy," Kaiba says, and this time he knows that he's lying, but it's inevitable. He can't exactly explain why he had cleared his schedule in order to see Atem without explaining what had happened four days prior and why he _needed_ to see him again today to bring this short-lived crush to a complete stop. "Busy and slow. And I need a new secretary. The one I have now is completely incompetent."

She had been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of tasks Kaiba had left in her hands and had handed in her two-weeks notice that very afternoon, after he had cancelled all his evening meetings without warning and left her to reschedule all of it herself. She had clearly thought that working as the personal secretary to Seto Kaiba would come with perks and privileges, and had been given a rude awakening— working for him meant embracing one hell of a workload. 

"That sucks. She was nice," Mokuba says absently. "She kept some grape sodas at her desk." 

" _Nice_ isn't effective for business. If she couldn't even handle rearranging a few scheduled conferences on short notice, I doubt she's capable of handling anything else," Kaiba scoffs, and tenses when he realizes his mistake. He never rearranges meetings or cancels on conferences and Mokuba knows this.

Mokuba's brows begin to draw together into a frown, but before he could ask about the changes to his schedule and launch another interrogation, Seto reaches across the island counter to ruffle his unruly hair. "Isn't there a video game you've been bugging me about? I have time tonight. We can play after dinner."

Another lie. His impromptu shopping spree had cost him an entire afternoon of work, which he needs to catch up on as soon as possible. 

But Mokuba's eyes become as wide as saucers and he begins to bounce in his seat with anticipation, and Kaiba feels a pinch of guilt. He really does have to spend more time with him. He'll schedule in time for that eventually.

"Yeah! It's a multi-player RPG and I think you'll like it," Mokuba near-shouts with an enthusiastic fist pump. Kaiba doesn't have the heart to tell him that the last thing he wants to do is play a rival company's RPG game after spending months developing and trial-testing his own. 

"Sounds great," he lies, adding one more to the growing list, and braces his hands down on the counter. "Right then. Dinner. Where's Isono?"

* * *

"Where's grandpa?"

It's late into the evening when Atem returns from closing the store. He closes the door quietly behind himself when he enters the Kamē Game shop and is startled to see Yugi behind the counter. It's a Tuesday night— Grandpa should be closing the shop.

Yugi looks at him from behind the counter, where he had been leaning on his elbows, face cupped in his palms. He waves, but it lacks the usual enthusiasm, and his smile is thin and wavering.

A wave of concern immediately washes over Atem and he lingers uncertainly beside the door before dropping his canvas satchel carelessly to the side and toeing off his shoes. 

"Yugi? Is everything alright?"

Making a beeline for the counter, the tension rises to his shoulders and his voice is a little sharper than he intended when he asks, "What's wrong? Where's grandpa?"

"He's upstairs. He wasn't feeling very well, so he asked me to close up tonight. I'm beginning to worry about him. He's getting dizzy spells a lot more often."

Atem's concern increases tenfold, but Yugi places a hand over his own and squeezes his hand reassuringly. 

"I think he's just overworking himself," he says in a small voice. "I know grandpa doesn't like to rest or take things slow, but he needs to rest more."

Atem doesn't need to look at Yugi's face to know that his eyes will be red-rimmed and glassy with unshed tears. 

The old man's health had been on the decline for a while now, but he had become especially weak and easily fatigued in the last few weeks, and Yugi and Atem were both beginning to fear that it might be something a little more serious than just 'getting damned old,' in the words of Sugoroku himself. 

"I'll take over his shifts for the week," Atem suddenly declares, and when he sees Yugi begin to perk up, he nods, struggling to convince himself more than Yugi. He hates minding the store on weekdays when business is slow, but it would put their minds at ease if Sugoroku could take bedrest for at least one week without interruption.

Even if it does come at the cost of his own sanity.

"I'm off for the rest of the week anyway. I'll just need you to cover when I have class on Tuesday."

A look of relief crosses over Yugi's face and his white-knuckled grip on the spray-bottle filled with cleaning solution loosens. He nods and breathes out a deep sigh he had been holding all evening, blinking past the unshed tears from before. Now that the most urgent matters have been put to rest, he resumes cleaning the shop in order to lock up for the night.

"How was work for you today?" Yugi asks distractedly, squirting the cleaning solution onto the fingerprint-streaked glass display cases and wiping down the counters. 

Atem can't stop the smile that comes to his mouth. He desperately tries to hide it before Yugi notices it, but Yugi looks up and immediately picks up on the way he's trying —and failing— to conceal his grin with a grimace. He tilts his head in curiosity, clearly expecting an explanation, and when Atem remains silent, the answer dawns on him and he narrows his eyes with a wide, unrestrained grin of his own. 

"Did you see that guy again?" he asks incredulously. 

Atem ruefully remembers that he can't hide anything from Yugi. 

"Yes," he admits, and can't hide his grin any longer. "Who would have guessed that Seto Kaiba needed an entirely new work wardrobe?" 

Yugi laughs and claps his hands in delight.

"That's great! But geez, how much clothing does one person need?" he wonders out loud, setting down the bottle of cleaning solution and balling the blue paper towel in his fist. He throws it with near-perfect accuracy into the trash bin in the corner of the room. "Made it! That's another point for me."

Atem groans and chalks a tally mark onto a small board hanging on the wall. 23-24. Their tie is now broken.

He doesn't let Yugi's tie-breaker distract him from the subject.

"Aibou. You practically _live_ in the same jeans and tank top," he points out with a shit-eating grin. "Not everyone else has the same devotion to one single outfit."

"Hey, it's...practical!"

Wordlessly, they fall into a routine— Atem bolts the front door, while Yugi locks the display cases with a tiny silver key, and they reconvene in the kitchen to cook dinner together. Atem slips into an apron and begins to dice and marinate vegetables, while Yugi sets rice to steam in a rice cooker and hops onto the counter to watch Atem. 

"So, tell me everything."

Atem purses his lips to the side but doesn't lift his gaze from the mushrooms and scallions falling into neat slices beneath his knife. "I didn't think I would see him again. You should have seen him the last time. He basically couldn't run out of the door fast enough." 

He balks, his pride stinging and cheeks burning with embarrassment, when he remembers their first encounter and how Kaiba had recoiled violently at his touch and hastily left the store. Every time he thinks about it, he feels the fresh sting of rejection anew and his gut twists unpleasantly and he wishes he didn't ever have to encounter Kaiba again.

But seeing him that afternoon had been a pleasant surprise. He had been polite, likeable, even a little charming — if he was still as disgusted or put off as he had been before, he didn't reveal it this time.

Atem even dares to think that Kaiba might have been _flirting_ with him at times.

He bites the inside of his cheek until it becomes painful. Mixed signals are almost just as bad as a straight-out rejection and infinitely more confusing. 

"Maybe he had something else to do that day," Yugi suggests thoughtfully. "He _is_ a really important businessman, after all. Besides, I heard that he's going to unveil a big project to the public soon."

Atem is no more comforted than he was before, but he forces a bland smile anyway. "Perhaps. It was still a surprise to see him again so soon. He never struck me as the type to shop off the rack."

He drops neatly-sliced carrot coins and slivers of onion into a sauté pan, where it sizzles loudly, releasing a fragrant scent besides spiced strips of meat, and he raises his voice over the delicious sound of crackling oil.

"I shouldn't complain. He pretty much bought out the entire new season selection from the shipment we just ordered in. Working on commission is finally beginning to pay off." 

"I'm sure that's not the _only_ reason you were happy to see him," Yugi says suggestively, and Atem is grateful that his back is turned to his sibling. If his cheeks are as red as he suspects they are, he can at least blame it on the heat that rose from the hot pan on the stove-top. "Didn't you say he was really cute?"

"Really _hot_ ," Atem blurts out, correcting him before he could think twice, and he's mortified when Yugi laughs hard enough to throw his head back and whacks it on one of the cabinets behind him with a loud _thunk_. 

Yugi winces and brings a hand to the back of his head, but he laughs through the pain. "Do you like him?"

Atem pushes the vegetables around in the pan with a plastic spatula with a little more force than necessary, thoroughly embarrassed and slightly annoyed. A splash of oil pops and burns the back of his hand and he curses under his breath. 

"Hey. It's okay if you have a crush on him, Atem," Yugi reassures him kindly, startling him by appearing at his side without warning. He takes over the spatula, nudging him aside, and begins dishing equal portions of rice, meat, and vegetables. He playfully knocks his hip against Atem's. "Remember how freaked out I was when I realized I had a crush on Anzu? I couldn't talk to her normally for a week. It's okay to be a little nervous."

Atem leans against the kitchen counter and stubbornly crosses his arms across his chest. "I don't have a crush on him. That would be ridiculous. I hardly know the first thing about him." 

That’s a lie. He’s dreamed about working for Seto Kaiba ever since he first decided he wanted to become a video game designer. Kaiba was the biggest name in the gaming industry, on equal footing with Pegasus and Industrial Illusions, and every game designer in the city vied for an elusive position at either company.

Kaiba is also appears in magazines quite often, and Atem never fails to buy a copy of the ones that star him on the cover.

He reaches for his cutlery, sullenly playing with his chopsticks. Talking about Kaiba makes a ball of dread form in the pit of his stomach. "It wouldn't be smart to develop a crush on him. He's a client, for one thing, and it would be incredibly inappropriate."

Yugi shrugs. "It wouldn't hurt. You can have a crush and be professional at the same time. He might even like you too!"

"He doesn't like me back the same way," Atem says with a frown, and the sore disappointment he's been denying to himself hits him full-force. "I don't even think he's gay. Or bi. Or interested. He certainly panicked when I grabbed his hand in order to fit the gloves properly. If that's not a sign to back off, I don't know what else _would_ be." 

Another thought strikes him and he shudders. “Besides, the last thing I want is a lawsuit for harassment hanging over my head.”

Yugi cocks his head to the side and stares him down with narrowed eyes. His voice is oddly intent when he asks again, "But do you _like_ him?"

Atem thinks for a moment, pushing his food around mindlessly, before sighing and setting his cutlery down in order to cup his face in his hands. 

Does he like Kaiba?

He’d had a mild celebrity crush on him when he was a teenager and Kaiba had first stepped on the scene as one of the pioneers of virtual reality tech. 

Meeting him had been a dream come true. 

And seeing him again had put a dreamy smile on his face for the rest of the day.

Shame and frustration burn hot on his cheeks and he releases a long-suffering groan from deep in his chest. His voice is muffled behind his hands, but his words are unmistakably clear:

"Yes. Yes, I do."

* * *

"Yes, yes I do _hafta be mean_. Do you have to be a sore loser?"

"I'm not! I knew I could never beat ya, big bro!"

Kaiba sets the game controller down beside his leg. He's sprawled out on one of the many giant beanbag chairs in Mokuba's room, where he had just defeated his younger brother for the fourth time. Playing a video game had actually lifted his spirits, much to his surprise— it had made him realize that the RPG mobile game he had labored over the year prior was substantially better, _incomparable really_ , to the crap that was currently on the market and it validated his suspicions that the game would be a success upon its release. 

Mokuba is equally happy beside him, if not even more so, and he beams at Kaiba with a wide, childish grin. "This was really fun, Seto. You should come home early more often!"

Kaiba smiles and reaches over to fondly pat Mokuba's head. His fingers are trapped in a snarl of dark, frizzy hair when he catches sight of the electric clock sitting on the bedside table and his hand freezes.  
"It's already ten minutes past your bedtime. You should have been in bed by nine-thirty," he says sternly. 

Much to his chagrin, Mokuba points a finger back at him. 

" _You_ weren't keeping track of the time," he says triumphantly, and sets down his controller. "How about one more round? If I win, no more curfew at ten!"

_He really is a Kaiba._

Seto exhales sharply, amused, and points to Mokuba's bed. "Nice try. Brush your teeth and go to sleep, kiddo."

Kaiba stands up with a horrific pop of his joints and winces, stretching out his stiff legs in front of him and straightening his back, aching from the bad, slumped posture he'd had on the beanbag chair. When he looks over his shoulder, he catches a flash of Mokuba’s dark hair disappearing past the doorway as he walks into the hallway, presumably to brush his teeth in the big guest bathroom he had claimed for himself, and he heads down the corridor to his own bedroom. 

A large, shadowy mound sits expectantly at the foot of his desk and he blinks in surprise, mildly alarmed as his eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness. He doesn't recognize the _thing_ and he blindly pats down the wall for the light switch, only to remember he had told Isono to carry his bags in from the car. When he flicks on the light, he immediately recognizes the pile of his own excessive purchases and breathes out a quiet little chuckle of relief, feeling irrational for his moment of panic. 

While his racing pulse settles and the wave of adrenaline subsides, he strips out of his clothing and puts on a silky bathrobe, leaving it untied and wearing nothing but briefs beneath it. 

The kiss of cool, airy fabric against his naked skin sends a shiver through his entire body, and a familiar heat begins to pool pleasantly in his stomach. 

Seto curiously traces a hand up his sternum, feeling the satiny smoothness of his own skin beneath his palm, and inhales sharply when his fingertip brushes over his nipple. 

His door is locked. Mokuba should be in bed. Isono only comes into his room when he rings. He's all alone in the privacy of his room. 

It’s been a while since he’s done this. 

Kaiba leaves the robe on and settles back against the high pile of pillows propped neatly against the bed-board. Closing his eyes, he resumes where he left off, circling a finger around a dusky nipple and feeling it pebble beneath his own touch. With his other hand, he slides his palm flat down the line of his abdominals, stopping just above the waistband of his briefs, and cups himself over the fabric, admiring the defined outline of his own hard dick. 

For once, something compels him to explore his own body and to take the time to seek out pleasure rather than to hastily go through the motions to accomplish release like it’s a burdensome task that needs to be carried out as quickly and effectively as possible. 

One hand continues to play with his nipples, curiously and experimentally twisting grazing with light touches, and the other rolls over his clothed erection with increasing pressure, until his back is beginning to arch and his breathing stutters. His fingers tentatively dip beneath the snug line of his waistband and feel the leaking tip of his cock, thumb rolling over it smoothly and catching the wetness on the pad of his finger with a dreamy sigh. 

He lazily rolls his head, looks to the side, and sees the mound of bags out of the corner of his eye. Before he could reign in his own thoughts, he pictures Atem, and heat explodes over every surface of his entire body. 

He abruptly sits up, face flushed red with shame and self-loathing, and promptly ignores the raging erection poorly concealed by the thin silk of his robe. 

With a sudden surge of frustration, he storms to his desk and kicks one of the bags off to the side with a vengeance, uncaring as its expensive contents fall onto the floor in a wrinkle-bound heap. He powers on his laptop, inhaling slowly and counting to ten impatiently while he waits for his hard-on to die down, and pulls up a list of expenditure reports to numb his mind until he can finally go to sleep. 

An hour later, he wearily draws back from his desk and leans back into his chair, closing his eyes with an exhausted sigh. His head painfully pounds with a tension headache and his eyesight is strained to the max, but every time he allows himself a moment to close his eyes, he thinks of Atem— but it’s _worse_ than it was before, because now, he can’t help but to picture him with tantalizingly few articles of clothing and in various compromising positions. 

Kaiba passes a hand over his face. His arousal had never really died down, and as his thoughts begin to wander down the gutter, it comes back full-force.

He wants to run his hands through Atem’s ridiculous hair and pull his head down onto his cock by the blond bangs, to push into that hot, wet mouth. He wants Atem at his mercy, that smart tongue rendered speechless by the fat cock filling his mouth. 

“Fuck...”

A quiet groan escapes his throat when an image of Atem’s face, mouth open lewdly to reveal a pink tongue covered in cum and eyes closed, floats to his mind. 

It’s obscene and degenerate, but he can’t deny himself any longer and reaches down to grip his dick, stroking himself to completion with a few quick, miserable strokes. Kaiba’s eyes remain closed and he shudders out a gasp, feels the wet cum explode into his palm and bites his lip when he pictures _that_ splashed over Atem’s face. 

His eyes are squeezed shut so tightly that it almost hurts, but opening them is almost worse because he’s faced with the mess he made. 

Revolted, he wipes his palm clean on a tissue procured from the box on his desk, grimacing at the tacky, unpleasant sensation in his underwear, and looks at his desk with dismay. His palm hadn’t caught all the ejaculate, and some of it had landed on his desk, conveniently where he had set the freshly printed reports he needed for the meeting later that day. 

His crush on Atem is becoming more of a plight than just a mere inconvenience. 

Had he really masturbated to the thought of his face? 

Kaiba dumps the fouled reports into the trash bin with an angry scowl and quickly reprints a second copy before shutting down the computer. A quick look at the clock on his desk reveals that he has exactly three hours to try to salvage enough sleep to function. 

He peels off the uncomfortably sticky underwear from his body and holds them away from himself, repulsed. He wants to shower and to try to scrub the filth off his body, but that would cost him at least fifteen minutes out of the precious few he has to sleep. He also briefly considers throwing the underwear away, a means of disposing of the evidence, but the designer insignia on the waistband convinces him to toss them to the laundry hamper. 

It’s a good thing he pays his staff for discretion. 

With a sigh, he crawls into bed and immediately closes his eyes, desperately hoping that sleep will wash over him and that he’ll forget all about his _indiscretion_ by the time morning rolls around.

* * *

Minding the counter is mind-numbingly boring.

Atem sighs and cups his chin in his palm. The only sound in the room is his own steady breathing and the faint click of the ticking clock hand. He had already cleaned the counters, polished the floors, and reorganized the card packs in the glass display according to color and size. 

The shop is otherwise silent and completely devoid of life besides himself, and for the umpteenth time that day, he wonders if he had forgotten to flip the **CLOSED** sign to **OPEN**. A bored roll of his eyes toward the door reveals, once again, that the sign was just as it's supposed to be and that the store was just _dead_ because nobody ever comes to the game shop on a mundane Thursday morning. 

Outside, a bird chirps cheerily and Atem enviously looks out the window, wishing that he was outside, basking in the unexpected sunlight. 

Closing his eyes, he composes an imaginary outfit perfect for the warm weather outside, immediately thinking of the fine linen tunic that had been sitting unworn and collecting dust in his closet all winter. 

Atem's opens his eyes again and his gaze flicks to the clock on the wall. A twitch forms in his left eye. Only three minutes had passed since the last time he had looked at the clock. 

Making a rumbling noise of complaint in the back of his throat, his head slides between his hands and one cheek presses flat against the cool glass pane of the display case. 

He's bored out of his mind. The boutique is often just as empty, which makes working on commission particularly difficult, but at least then he could distract himself from his own boredom by going around and looking at the trendy garments he saves up to buy, touching luxurious fabrics, examining at the craftsmanship, and occasionally trying on shirts that cost more than he makes in one paycheck. 

Atem drums his fingertips against the glass countertop, satisfied by the soft clicking sound of his own polished nails tapping impatiently against the hard surface. 

When that also bores him, he sits up, sighs, and brings out the 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle from behind the counter. It's a puzzle of a strange red and purple skyline, dotted with disturbingly detailed eyes and open mouths, although age had worn out the paint and the formerly terrifying eyes, which had been detailed with veins and dark shadows and had promptly given him nightmares the first time he assembled it, are now smudges of white against a shadowy violet backdrop.

The faded colors and ragged, worn edges are a testament to the hundreds of times he and Yugi had put it together during long, especially dull afternoons in the game shop. 

Atem bites the inside of his cheek to suppress another bored sigh and begins to assemble the corner pieces, sliding them into place with familiar ease. It’s hardly mentally exhaustive, but it at least provides him something to do with his hands while his mind wanders back to his conversation with Yugi the night before. 

His attraction toward Seto Kaiba wasn’t something that Atem had been hiding— hell, he’s had a mild crush on Kaiba for years now, but he had been certainly been startled to find out that it was so transparent. Yugi has taken one look at his face, the flustered grin he couldn’t quite hide, and had _known_ , which was equally unnerving and impressive.

Atem pushes a corner piece into place and purses his lips. 

Seto Kaiba is an arrogant, rich jerk. An arrogant, rich, _handsome_ jerk. 

An arrogant, rich, handsome jerk with a strange sense of humor, bizarre taste in fashion, intense cobalt-blue eyes, and a mysterious, alluring smile that makes him feel just a little weak in the knees. 

Also, he's likely straight. And while Atem personally doesn't care very much for labels himself, he knows without a doubt that he is indeed very, very much attracted to _Mr._ Kaiba. 

That doesn't bother him as much as the fact that his crush will go unrequited and the most he can look forward to in his future encounters with Kaiba are polite handshakes and the occasional sarcastic grin. 

It's just not enough.

A crush on Seto Kaiba may not hurt his job, but it certainly has the potential to hurt him if he doesn't get a grip on reality.

Whatever this longing ache is in his chest, it needed to come to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has anyone else noticed that Atem has like.... _a lot_ of outfit changes in the show, while Yugi always wears the same black tank? Atem being a style king is like, totally canon. 
> 
> Anyway, I promise I do actually have a juicy, convoluted plot in mind, but it needed some preamble, so please be patient with the slow set-up! Things will pick up soon :D
> 
> As always, comments are very greatly appreciated and really inspire me to crank out chapters quickly!
> 
> Next update will be in two weeks! <3


	3. Chapter 3

Thursday blends into Friday, and Friday transitions into the long-awaited weekend. 

Atem’s insufferable boredom is prolonged on Saturday. 

Yugi had frantically rushed out of bed at eight in the morning with wild eyes and sleep-tousled hair, claiming that he had forgotten all about an assignment that had been due on Friday night at midnight. He needed to get his laptop back from Joey, who had borrowed it to try out a new PC game the night before, and was ready to sprint out the door within three minutes of waking up to the gut-wrenching realization that the assignment was late and he could only pray for partial credit.

“Sorry, can’t stay!” Yugi calls breathlessly, winded from racing down the stairs and nearly tripping over his untied shoelaces.

His hair is in a frantic disarray, violet eyes matching in their wild intensity as he scans the room for his backpack. A relieved grin appears on his face when he spots it haphazardly thrown over the arm of a sofa. He shoulders it quickly and turns to Atem with a wide-eyed, innocent look on his heart-shaped face.

“I can’t believe I forgot all about the due date! I’ve been studying for this all week and I forgot all about it! Now I’ve gotta go to Jou’s house...maybe the library...you don’t mind taking over today, right?”

It’s less a question than it is a thinly-veiled plea. He already knows Atem’s been counting down the days until the weekend, when they agreed that Yugi would man the counter. He had been free every morning and afternoon during the week to attend classes at Domino University and to study in the library for a few hours after every lecture while Atem tended to the store. At two o’clock, they switched, and it was Atem’s turn to attend lectures at the city college and work at the boutique. 

_Normally_. That was _normally_ the well-established routine.

Atem had tended to the shop from eight in the morning till closing time at six in the evening all week, so that Yugi can study for his midterm exams _and write the accompanying essay_ without distractions. 

His sacrifices had clearly been in vain. 

Atem feels a surge of annoyance rise up inside him, along with a frustrated noise from deep within his throat. “Yugi, we agreed—”

“I know, and I’m so sorry, but I can’t afford to fail this class again! Please, Atem? I promise I’ll pay for dinner tonight!”

“It was your turn to pay anyway!”

Yugi’s expression momentarily blanks, before he blinks and has the decency to look sheepish. “I know, but I was going to ask you to do it! Please? I’ll pay tonight and every night for the rest of the month.”

Atem could never say no to those pleading eyes.

Nor could he deny such a tempting offer for free food. 

And so he finds himself sitting behind the counter again, frustration mounting, watching the minute-hand on the clock face tick with infuriating sluggishness. It’s early in the morning, even earlier than the opening hours listed at the door, and Atem’s plans to escape before the store doors opened were foiled before he could even set foot over the threshold.

Atem idly plays with a strand of honey-blond hair that hangs down over his face, the rest of it drawn back into a little ponytail that hangs cutely over the nape of his neck. Every time he moves his head, the wavy strands tickle the sensitive skin at his nape. He distracts himself by playing with his hair and tending to his nails with little dabs of cuticle oil and a gentle buffing file. 

For a few minutes, the only sounds in the shop are the hungry rumbles of his stomach and the gentle swoosh of the nail file until he hears a third quiet, shuffling noise coming from the direction of the stairwell. Atem is only alerted to Sugoroko’s presence by the soft scuffle of his sneakers on the carpeted steps, and he bolts upright, startled.

“Grandpa! What are you doing out of bed? You should be resting.”

Sugoroku waves a wide, wrinkled hand dismissively. “Pfah! I’m tired of being in bed. I’m tired of being tired! And I know that you must be tired of being trapped here too.” 

His eyes, as wide and deep-violet as Yugi’s, are bright with energy and mischief. He winks conspiratorially and Atem is instantly wary. 

“We’re two birds trapped in the same cage. Let’s find a rock and bust the cage open, or whatever it is they say about rocks and birds.”

“That’s not quite how that saying goes,” Atem interjects helplessly. The old man fixes Atem an intent stare, and Atem knows there’s no way he can bargain his way out of this, but he protests anyway. “Grandpa, you’re supposed to be resting and I’m supposed to be looking after the store.” 

He pauses and looks at the empty floor dubiously. “...though there’s not much to look after at the moment.”

Sugoroku laughs and lovingly pats the spotless glass counter. “Let me tend to the store. You’ve been taking good care of her all week.” He looks Atem up and down, and winks. “Besides, you’re already dressed to go out. What’s the point of being all dressed up just to stay in all day?”

Atem can’t help but smile at that. Still, he thinks of his promise to Yugi and he hesitates, lingers by the counter even though every instinct is screaming at him to take off running out the door while he still has the chance. 

“I promised Yugi—” he begins stubbornly, but Sugoroku interrupts him by clapping a heavy hand onto his shoulder with enough strength to make him wince. 

“I know, I know you did,” he chides. “But I’m not getting any younger and neither are you, so go enjoy your youth while you still can!” 

His deep-set eyes are kind and good-natured, and he ushers Atem out from behind the counter with a playful flick of his hand. “I’ll be fine on my own. Go on, or else I won’t pay you for the overtime you put in this week!”

Atem releases an exasperated laugh, but pulls his grandfather into a grateful hug, squeezing the old man’s broad shoulders lovingly. 

His conscience screams at him to stay and he feels guilty for not putting up more of a fight and insisting that Sugoroku should stay in bed for a few more hours, but he can’t help but feel pure relief that he’s been freed from the burden of tending to the game shop. 

“Thank you, grandpa. I’ll be back before dinner.”

Darting out from behind the counter, he pauses by the door to step into a pair of clunky leather boots that nicely compliment his rugged, all-black denim ensemble. The black shorts are rolled up two inches above his knees and he’s wearing the sleeveless black hoodie he had caught Kaiba ogling him in —he knew damn well it flattered his arms, and Kaiba’s slack-jawed stare had only fueled his ego— with a denim jacket thrown on top. 

He could feel Sugoroku’s gaze boring a hole into his back and feels wary under the scrutiny, wonders if his shorts are too short or the oversized jacket doesn’t fit his frame, but when he looks over his shoulder questioningly, Sugoroku’s holding up a thumb in the universal gesture of approval. 

“You look great. Go knock their socks off, my boy!”

Atem grins and throws a pink cap on backwards over his hair. 

He doesn’t have to be told twice.

* * *

Light footsteps thud across the pavement in a steady rhythm, interrupted by the occasional skid of a stumble. The humid summer heat parches Yugi’s throat, making his breathing ragged and erratic, and he’s panting open-mouthed by the time he reaches the end of the lane. 

After exactly two minutes of sprinting down the sidewalk, he loses his breath and comes to a complete stop in his tracks in order to double over, hands dropping to his trembling knees for support. 

He greedily sucks in lungfuls of air, feeling the sweet dizziness of oxygen flooding his deprived lungs, and wonders, not for the first time, whether or not he might be certifiably asthmatic. 

The back of his shirt is drenched with sweat, and when he wipes a hand across his forehead, he grimaces at slick sheen that glistens on his palm.

“Damn, that’s gross.”

It takes three minutes and fifty-three seconds to recover from the consequences of his short burst of adrenaline and panic-fuelled running, and he reasonably decides that he would save time by power-walking, rather than running and being forced to take time to recover every few minutes. 

With still-ragged breath, he walks across the street, making his way toward the park that leads to Joey’s apartment on the other side of the city. 

His vision is still fuzzy at the corners and his head is still spinning, but he pauses when he realizes that the thing in the corner of his vision, a silver, shadowy blur has been hovering in the margins of his peripheral vision for the last few minutes, wasn’t an illusion or trick of light like he first thought, but an enviably beautiful luxury sports car.

Yugi doesn’t know anything about luxury cars, but he knows enough to know that those are rare in this particular spot of town and undoubtedly worth more than the average resident’s entire annual income. 

When he abruptly stops, surprised into a motionless state, the car slows down and almost comes to a full stop in the middle of the street. He can’t see the driver past the deeply tinted windows, which makes the hair on his arms stand on end, but before he could open his mouth to shout or even think of how to react in what was potentially a very dangerous situation, the car takes off racing down the street with a silky purr of the powerful engine. 

Yugi stands in place for a few seconds, simultaneously in awe of the expensive silver car and incredibly weirded out by the strange way it had slowed down as if the driver had been tailing him. 

Before he could think too deeply about it and work himself into an nervous frenzy, he remembers that he hasn’t even started the essay worth nearly a full-quarter of his total grade.

He blanches and takes off sprinting.

* * *

Inside the car, Kaiba’s reeling. 

His hands, wrapped in a white-knuckled grip around the leather steering-wheel protectors, are trembling and his heart is racing faster than even the current speed at which he’s driving away from the tiny figure on the sidewalk. Atem’s tiny frame becomes microscopic in his rearview mirror as the distance between them increases. 

He has to pull over for a second to compose himself. 

Kaiba’s slim fingers curl and uncurl against the steering wheel and he feels the subtle vibrations from the car’s running engine beneath the flat of his palm, as he chokes out an extended exhale to bring his racing pulse back under control. His gaze is almost fearful when he checks his rear-view mirror again, and as much as he hopes that Atem had taken a different direction, he can’t help but wish just as much that Atem would appear within eyesight again.

He waits with bated breath for a second, ten seconds, a minute, and feels a hazy mix of relief and disappointment when the only movement on the street is the blur of a little blue sedan driving past him. 

Once his hands become steady on the steering wheel again and he can check his mirrors without a hitch in his breath any time he spots a trace of movement, he edges the engine forward and resumes his drive to KaibaCorp, located smack in the center of Domino City. 

It’s not often that he makes the decision to drive himself to work. He has various highly-skilled chauffeurs in his employment, kept in rotation throughout the week, but the occasional lengthy drive from the manor to the city center provided a good opportunity to let his mind wander and allowed him the rare moment of peace away from ringing phones, nagging secretaries, and even Mokuba’s well-intended harping— _you need to eat, Seto, you have that big investment meeting today_! 

When he’s behind the wheel, there’s never anything but the stretch of road in front of him and the vibrations of music streaming from powerful subwoofers—

—until that morning, when Atem had somehow managed to invade Kaiba’s rare moments of privacy _again_. 

Kaiba’s fingers twitch and tighten around the steering wheel. 

Until the moment he had spotted an oddly familiar shock of hair walking down the street, his mind had been singularly occupied with thoughts about the upcoming meeting scheduled at noon, when he would present the proposal for the start of a new project, which would require plenty of funding from reluctant investors. He’s well-aware that it’s going to take plenty of persuasion and negotiation to get them to agree to his terms and to provide such a substantial sum of money, and he had been rehearsing the opening remarks to his presentation all morning. 

Then he had spotted Atem, and his entire train of thought had been derailed. 

At first, he was concerned that his obvious obsession was going a little too far— he was beginning to spot Atem everywhere, which was a clear sign of a hyperactive imagination, which he had certainly never been accused of having. But that distinct mess of inky black and plum-colored tresses was too unique to be confused, and Kaiba had lulled to a stop just to stare at Atem incredulously from the air-conditioned interior of his Mercedes-Benz, unable to believe he would run into him in plain sight, out in public. 

He hadn’t realized how creepy it must have been until he saw the alarmed expression on Atem’s face. And he certainly wasn’t going to hop out of the car to say hello, so he sped away after one last, lingering look and made a mental note not to drive this car to the boutique for a few weeks, because he couldn’t even begin to imagine how he could explain himself if Atem were to remember and recognize the model. 

As much as he would like to think about Atem, perhaps even drive back to offer him a ride to his destination —and to discreetly pry into his life and learn more about him in the process— his work takes priority over everything else in his life, including his curiosity about Atem. And now, he’s finally close to receiving funding and meeting the necessary requirements for his proposal, if he can just nail the conference that afternoon. 

He can’t allow himself to be distracted by a pair of beautifully expressive eyes and an unbelievably cute ass wrapped tight in snug leather pants. 

As he begins to drive again with one last regretful glance at his rearview window, he pushes the flurry of thoughts about Atem into the furthest recesses of his mind and refocuses on the matter at hand. He has no choice but to ignore the nagging urge to drive back to him and pretend that he hadn’t spotted him at all, if that’s what it takes to get him through the morning. 

The entrance to KaibaCorp is empty when he arrives. 

That won’t be the case in three days, when he’s scheduled to release a press conference to unveil the pending approval of his latest project. 

KaibaCorp had been generating a buzz of excitement for the last six months, which had all started with a vague, mysterious announcement via the company’s webpage about the release of an ‘upcoming attraction.’

Thoughts and speculations about the project had run rampant— people had sparked rumors that the project could be _anything_ , from space-age interdimensional technology to an elite school for highly-skilled duelists to a new, fully-interactive virtual reality system that would connect the entire gaming community worldwide. 

Only one person had come even close in speculating that KaibaCorp was building an amusement park of sorts. Kaiba had quickly used his authority as the owner of the company in question to have that tweet discreetly taken down before it could gain any traction as a popular theory.

Kaiba sits at his desk, long legs awkwardly and uncomfortably crossed beneath him, fingers steepled and gaze unblinking. He stares at one of the computer monitors in front of him, scanning the projected sales and investment returns. The numbers are promising, and he knows that he can put a good spin on the undoubted expense-versus-returns argument that’s going to start up the moment he walks into the conference room. 

Ten billion yen is a difficult price to negotiate, but his tactics of persuasion and intimidation have proven to be effective. 

Kaiba feels the stirrings of excitement and pride as he stares at the completed plans for the future Kaiba Land on the monitor display, an identical copy neatly rolled into a blueprint tube on his desk, waiting to be carried and presented to a crowd of investors in exactly nine minutes. 

This project was his brainchild and sole dedication, and its execution had occupied his every waking thought obsessively for the last year. 

He had gone to various architecture firms until he had finally found a promising architect who had brought pen to paper and had made the necessary adjustments to the designs Kaiba had drawn himself— nobody else had been up to the task of accommodating Kaiba’s designs, and had all timidly asked him to consider redesigning the park or lowering his expectations. 

He dismissed them on the spot. 

It had taken six months for him to find the right architect at Schroeder Corp. The architect in question was an irritating, antagonizing man —the only man Kaiba had ever met who could give Pegasus’ flamboyance a run for its money— who had somehow managed to get on every single one of Kaiba’s nerves within minutes of their first encounter, but the quality of his work had no comparison. 

He was the only architect who took on the personal challenge of bringing Kaiba’s difficult, nearly-impossible designs to life, and his dedication to the challenge produced the exact results Kaiba was looking for. 

Every last detail was neatly jotted down on blueprint paper the exact way he had envisioned the very first time he dared to dream about owning an amusement park when he was sixteen years old. 

Kaiba holds the roles of blueprint in his hand, self-assured and steady, as he crosses the corridor and steps into the conference room at precisely twelve noon, on the dot. 

The plans had been drawn and completed exactly two days earlier, after nearly a year of laborious planning and frequent meetings with Schroeder to approve of every design, and at last the project blueprints were ready to be presented and promoted.

* * *

Assembled around the long, oblong table in the center of the conference room is a ring of familiar mousy faces, each man looking greedy and money-hungry, grubby and leech-like, and Kaiba despises every single one of them. 

He’s certain that the feeling must be mutual.

Nevertheless, his project requires external funding, which is his sole motivation for appealing to them with this proposal, and he’s proven time and time again that he can return their investments threefold, which is their only motivation for accepting and funding the project. There’s a working balance between them and he plans to exploit that resource until the construction of Kaiba Land is complete. 

Kaiba doesn’t waste his time with pleasantries before he begins, straight to the point per usual.

“I’ve called this meeting because I would like to make a mutually-beneficial proposal.” 

He stands tall at the head of the table, a towering, domineering figure that looms over everyone in the room. Years of presentations and proposals have made public addresses like these second nature to him. 

His voice is level and confident, and the subtle sweeping gestures and posture scream authority and demand attention. He despises business diplomacy, but he’s good at it, and he has everyone’s eyes drawn toward him just as they should be. 

“Many of you have worked with KaibaCorp for years. You funded our projects, and in return, your investments were multiplied. Once again, I come to you with a proposal that is certain to please _everyone’s_ individual interests.” 

Someone holds a finger up to catch his attention. Kaiba ignores it, inhales to catch his breath before launching on another segment of his prepared speech, before someone interjects,

“How are we supposed to have confidence in this project when you haven’t even released the last project you asked us to fund?” 

There’s a polite hardness to the man’s tone, the professional, somewhat-subtle way of sneaking an implicit _fuck you_ into his tone without outright offending one of his biggest business partners. 

Kaiba sighs and fixes a cold, unimpressed glare on the offending party. “The coding for the game is nearly complete. I’ve seen to the production of this mobile app myself. The only reason it has yet to be released is because there’s one consistent bug that has ruined the animation effects during every sample test run. I refuse to authorize public release on a product that is flawed and associated with the name of _my_ company.”

“Clearly your mistakes are costing us money. If the game isn’t released and the people aren’t playing it, then our investment in this game is costing us every single day that it goes unreleased,” another protests gruffly, and every muscle in Kaiba’s body becomes tense under the force of that blunt accusation. 

Kaiba brings his hands down on the desk and doesn’t meet anyone’s gaze. He stares at his own hands, takes a moment to admire the soft, polished crescents of his fingernails, stalls for time. He counts out the slow, gentle tick of the second-hand on clock face of his Breguet watch, waits ten seconds, then another five, before he looks up again and makes a show of exhaling slowly.

His voice is deceptively calm when he says, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to produce a mobile game that is targeted toward a worldwide audience of over one million?”

He’s met with startled silence. His voice steadily rises until he’s nearly shouting. 

“Do you have any idea the amount of work it takes to create the basic coding of a functioning, marketable game in the short span of six months? Do you know the amount of work I’ve had to delegate to a team of talented animators, design artists, coders?” 

His voice is tight and controlled, but loud, and the man who made the accusation has enough good sense to look mortified. “Actually, do you have any idea how difficult it is to even _find_ a competent team to task with a project this large?”

Kaiba slams his hands down on the desk. The sound is like a clap of thunder in the otherwise-deathly silent room.

“Do you?” he barks, and he’s pleased to see a violent flinch roll through the crowd of businessmen in the room. 

A few men squirm uncomfortably in their seats, made uneasy by the intensity of his glare and his unexpected interrogation. Their visceral reaction to his fury satisfies him, fills him with perverse glee that he’s careful not to allow to show on his face. His expression remains unreadable, with the exception of the tiny twitch at the corner of lips, which could be interpreted as angry or amused. The tone of his voice intentionally misleads them to no other conclusion than _pissed off_.

“I provided you with a well-planned proposal, met your ridiculous time constraints, and have handed over a functioning finished product. Make no mistake—” He locks eyes with the man who questioned him and holds it without blinking, much to the other man’s obvious discomfort. “—the product is ready for release. But I will _not_ release it until it is perfect. I will not have KaibaCorp’s name associated with a faulty product.” 

“But the delayed release is costing us,” another man sputters out, and Kaiba has to give him some credit— he has the balls to still continue to protest. 

Kaiba looks him over critically. Mousy, stringy brown hair, a neatly kept mustache, rings on every chubby, sausage-like finger. Seto’s condescending glare is searing, and the middle-aged man cowers back down into his seat.

Kaiba takes back his initial assessment. He’s a spineless worm after all. 

“I will _personally_ fund the delay expenses until the game’s launch date.” 

A murmur of relief and approval floods the room. 

Kaiba’s lip curls. 

There’s no shame in their thirst for money. They’d sooner release unsuitable material for the sole motive of raking in money, rather than wait to release the faultless finished product. 

He’s disgusted. 

“That’s settled then. It won’t be long before the game is released and your investments are returned threefold. But let's move on to the topic of my latest proposal, gentlemen.” 

Gentlemen. What a joke.

He expertly masks his scorn with an empty smile. He’s conscious of the tension in his hands and relaxes his fists, subtly flexing his fingers before bringing one hand to his pocket and using the other to direct a laser pointer across the presentation board, where the blueprints for Kaiba Land are tacked.

“This proposal is a deviation from KaibaCorp’s gaming technology brand. For years now, KC has developed technology that goes hand in hand with the games owned and produced by Industrial Illusions. I want to take a step away from that and work on a new chapter: public entertainment venues. I am proposing the creation of a themed amusement park, Kaiba Land.” 

There only sound in the room is one sharp intake of breath and the soft, electric hum of the air conditioner. Someone coughs, and that seems to break the silent spell that had been cast over the room, and the furious whispers break out.

One voice objects louder than the rest. 

“An _amusement_ park?”

Kaiba doesn’t bother to turn to address the voice that came from someone seated in the left corner of the room. “Yes.” 

“But with all the tech—“ 

“KaibaCorp’s existing technology will be incorporated into the attractions of the park,” he cuts in smoothly, already anticipating the unspoken argument. “I understand that there’s little novelty in an amusement park, especially when most of the entertainment industry is now focused on mobile gaming and internet RPGs.”

He pauses for effect, and he’s well-aware that everyone in the room is clinging to his every word and the edge of their seats. “ _But_ KaibaCorp has already placed stakes in the mobile game industry. We have yet to release Duel Links to the public, but there’s been plenty of demand for the official launch ever since its development was announced last year. If we incorporate elements from Duel Links and use the already-existing holographic tech we pioneered, the greatest attraction in Kaiba Land will without a doubt be the virtual reality duel world, which will allow visitors to play Duel Monsters in real-time, across the various locations of the Kaiba Land amusement parks. Champions can duel internationally in the first-ever global tournament, and will subsequently be drawn toward regional parks.” 

“How will you release Duel Links if your team will be focused on Kaiba Land? Even if you’re paying the delay expenses, we’re not making any money unless the game’s released.” 

Kaiba only narrowly refrains from rolling his eyes. “I will personally find a team that is more than capable of handling this assignment.”

A few lips are pursed doubtfully, but he can see the interest sparkling in a few beady eyes. One bearded man rubs his chin thoughtfully with his thumb and forefinger, and Kaiba recognizes him as the wealthiest businessman out of the group. 

He’s a venture capitalist, despicable for funding start-up projects and contractually cheating them out of any profits upon their inevitable closures. Kaiba knows that there’s nothing but insatiable greed and avarice beneath that benevolent, fatherly facade. 

_Checkmate._

“Can you guarantee the project’s success?”

“No more than I was able to guarantee the success of previous projects, including the holographic technology that made KaibaCorp a success. But I’m sure your bank statements can attest to the success of your business ventures with my company.”

* * *

The business deal was cinched. 

Kaiba reclines in the luxuriously soft leather of the spinning chair behind his desk, elbows on the armrests and fingers steepled over his chest. His legs are stretched out beneath his desk, crossed comfortably at the ankle, and he stares at the facial identification software program waiting expectantly on the screen of his desktop. 

The cursor has been hovering over the **BEGIN** button for the last sixteen minutes, blinking at him tauntingly and waiting for him to say _fuck it_ and run a search. 

Kaiba hasn’t moved in what felt like hours. It’s easily within his means to run a search on Atem, yet he sits paralyzed, unable to bring himself to begin the process.

He has very few qualms —none, in fact— about the ethics of invading Atem’s privacy. He’s only all-too familiar with using any means necessary to achieve his own purposes, and he hardly balks at the idea of utilizing public surveillance to trace information about Atem. 

He’s scared of the implications of his actions.

The very idea of becoming invested in another person to any extent makes his head spin, and by allowing himself to pursue personal information about Atem, that’s precisely what he’s doing. He’s expressing _interest_. He’s pursuing another human being and accepting all the potential repercussions of intimacy. 

His loyalty to Mokuba and his dedication to his very work would become estranged with emotional obligations toward another human being. It meant reducing the already-borrowed time he spent in the company of Mokuba, and compromising the hours he spent at work and the dedication to the projects that hang in the balance. There isn’t any part of him that wants to deal with that— 

Except the tiny sliver of him that does. 

There’s something about the prospect of compatibility, the search for common ground and shared interests, that holds his attention hostage and that draws his gaze toward the text box on the screen, simply begging to be clicked. 

Kaiba reaches a hand forward to click on the cursor. He distantly notes that the tips of his fingers are trembling unsteadily. 

Belatedly, he recognizes the flaw in his plan- he needs an existing photograph of Atem in order for the software to work. 

Kaiba purses his lips to the side in thought. It’s an obstacle, which would provide him a decent enough excuse to abandon the entire plan and go on about his day without a second thought about his wildly intrusive scheme. 

He goes through with it anyway. 

The solution is simple. 

It only takes seconds for Kaiba to find a picture of Atem’s employee photo at the boutique. Atem gazes coolly at the camera, eyes strangely intense —maybe it was just the rare color of his eyes and the deep shadows cast beneath them— and his lips are drawn into a faint smile. 

The picture on the screen isn’t as good as the real thing.

Equally attractive and photogenic, he can’t deny it, but it lacks the surplus of charisma and allure that Atem wields in-person.

From there, it’s almost painfully easy to access the city cams and track down Atem’s last known locations. Kaiba’s fingers run swiftly over the keys as he enters a logarithm that narrows down the addresses by the frequency of visits to any given address. 

Eyeing the screen dubiously, he runs a search for locations that Atem visits more than three times per week. The address of the boutique immediately appears in a text box beneath a map of Domino, where a little red icon flags the store’s location. Four other locations are marked on the map, and the addresses are listed beneath the address to the boutique. 

Domino University. Domino Community College. Gamble Coffee. Kame Game. 

Sounds like a college student. 

Kaiba can’t figure out why he frequents two different college campuses, but doesn’t give it much thought beyond a passing acknowledge. He pulls up the records for all the currently enrolled students at DCC, which takes minimally more effort to access than the city street cams. 

There are over fourteen thousand students on the university register, but Kaiba’s not put off by the long list of academic profiles— it hardly takes any tactical genius to hit ctrl+f and Atem’s name is so blessedly rare, it appears under search results immediately. 

Bingo. 

Atem’s student ID photo is almost identical to his employee ID, but he looks caught off guard, as if the photo was snapped while he was still settling into position. It’s endearing, those wide eyes and slightly-gaping mouth, and Kaiba saves it to the personal files on his desktop with a hint of a smile. 

His gaze flits back to the personal information on the screen. He rolls his chair closer to the desk, propping his elbows onto the dark cherry oak top, and quickly reads the page, absorbing every word. 

Atem Mutou. Age 23 (XX/XX/XXXX). Sex: M. Emergency contact(s): Sugoroku Mutou and Yugi Mutou. Address—

Kaiba recognizes the listed address as the same one belonging to Kame Game, the game shop registered by the city cams. Atem must live there, he realizes, and assumes that the shop must double as the family home. 

It would also appear that fashion is a side-hobby and a temporary job he just so happens to be good at, not a lifelong career aspiration. Atem is a game design student, on track to graduate at the end of that term. He can’t imagine Atem would waste his time with an engineering degree if he wanted to remain a lifelong celebrity stylist. 

Curiosity leads him to click on Atem’s transcripts, and Kaiba’s impressed to find that he had consistently achieved near-perfect marks in every course he had taken over the last four years. 

He looks closer and the names of the courses are respectable— Atem had skipped over the required prerequisites in order to take higher-level math courses that even Kaiba had struggled to master during the years of his intense homeschooling and private tutelage. 

What the hell was a dedicated student like Atem doing in a place like Domino Community College? 

Kaiba hesitates to call Atem an underachiever— his transcripts indicate that he’s anything but. He thinks about the game shop, chalks it down to lack of funding, and keeps scrolling down, pushing the matter to the back of his mind. A phone number is listed beneath his home address, and Kaiba hears a silent _Eureka!_ go off in his mind. 

Atem’s phone number. He’s found it what he was looking for.

* * *

Atem’s phone number glares at him from the screen. He hasn’t saved the number into his phone as a contact yet, and the ten digit number at the top of the screen looks like an accusation— he’s gathered the information he was looking for, and there it glows on the screen in front of him, but he can’t bring himself to do anything about it, doesn’t even know where to start. 

He can’t remember the last time he had felt so unsure how to proceed in a situation. 

Seto’s thumb hovers over the keypad. 

What tone should he take? Polite? Friendly?

...Hip? 

He experimentally types out _yo, atem?_ and a superfluous wink emoji…before quickly clearing the text with a frown. 

Who the fuck even says _yo_ anymore? 

_Hello. Am I talking to Atem?_

That doesn’t sound right either. 

It’s harder than he thought it would be to compose a casual text message. A frustrated frown begins to tug at his brow and he leans back into his chair, smoothing over his twitching eyelid with the pad of his thumb. With one hand, he lazily texts, 

**Seto:** Hey. Atem?

Kaiba hits send before he could overthink it further. He stares at his phone anxiously, staring at the traitorous screen unblinkingly, waiting with rising anxiety.

The first few minutes, he waits patiently, looking at his phone expectantly, anticipating the pregnant pause to be broken by the chime of his text tone at any second. 

Five minutes pass, then ten, and when it’s been fourteen minutes since he sent the text, he breaks out into a sweat. 

There isn’t any movement on the screen, and after he stares at it for a few more minutes without any sign of response, he frowns at it sulkily, as if it’s the one to blame for the lack of immediate reply. He catches sight of his own furrowed brows in the reflection on his screen and sighs.

He sets the phone on his desk, screen facing downward, and sinks into his chair sulkily, bringing his feet up to the edge of the desk, carefully spread to avoid staining or wrinkling any of the papers on his desk. 

His phone chimes loudly and he’s so startled, he jerks upright and nearly throws off his balance and tips out of his chair. He drops his KCPhone in his haste to snatch it up from his desk, breathes out a quick “God fucking damn it,” under his breath, and scrabbles to pick up the cellphone to read the text. 

**0XX-XXX-XXXX:** yo. yeah, is atem (thumbs up) new phone who dis?

Kaiba’s breath snags in his chest and he releases a breathless chuckle. For all that Atem looked cool and dressed stylishly, he’s a total dork. Kaiba quickly saves his contact information as such. 

**Seto:** Hey.

Autocorrect nearly changes his name to _stem_ just before he sends it. He hastily corrects it, mouth twitching into a grin, before shooting a follow-up text. 

**Seto:** It’s Seto Kaiba.

* * *

Atem is eating dinner with Yugi, Tristan, Joey, and Anzu is when his phone buzzes unexpectedly. Laughter explodes around the table as Joey tells the punchline of his joke, which Atem misses as he looks down at his phone on his lap curiously. 

**0XX-XXX-XXXX:** Hey. Atem?

His interest is piqued. It’s a text from an unknown number, and Atem is just about to slide his thumb across the screen to respond, when Joey calls out, 

“Hey, Atem, you didn’t laugh at my joke, man! I said, a shitty punch-line!” 

He looks up at the familiar laughing faces around the table, Joey’s face transformed into some goofy, impish grin for comedic effect, and he wonders who the hell could be texting him when all his friends are already sitting right beside him in the diner. 

Joey sits directly across him, wearing a thousand-watt grin, caramel-colored eyes glittering with mirth. Beside him, Tristan is rolling his eyes with poorly-concealed amusement and scoffing to hide a laugh, and Anzu is leaning into Yugi, slender shoulders rolling with laughter. Yugi’s cheeks are flushed a peachy pink, and his eyes are crinkled happily at the corners. He’s beaming to the side and looking at Anzu with a reverence and tenderness so sincere that even _Atem’s_ chest aches with it. 

Atem can’t even remember the setup to the joke, but the happiness in the atmosphere is infectious and it brings a broad, lopsided grin to his face. He sets down his phone face-down on the table, ignoring the mysterious text in favor of delving into his strawberry milkshake and hearing Tristan taunt Joey for his terrible sense of humor and stolen punchlines— and watching, not without a hint of guilty jealousy, Yugi and Anzu lean into each other with easy intimacy. 

It’s not until twenty-eight minutes later —another handful of shitty jokes, clever wordplay, and loud bursts of raucous laughter that annoy the other diners in the hamburger joint— that he remembers the unread text. 

While Joey disappears to the bathroom to ‘take a quick leak’ and Yugi intimately leans in to murmur something into Anzu’s ear, pressed in so close that he’s almost kissing the silvery twinkle of her delicate earring, Atem discreetly pulls out his cellphone beneath the table and eyes the mystery number at the top of the screen, trying to work out which region the call came from, all to no avail. It’s a hidden number, the likes of which are normally spam, but something about the two-word message had stolen his attention and holds it captive. 

He could ignore it, but curiosity outweighs his apathy. 

**Atem:** yo. yeah, is atem (thumbs up) new phone who dis? 

His fingers swiftly tap out the message and he hits send without a second thought. The reply comes back more quickly than he expected, and when he reads the name on the text screen, he nearly drops his phone right into the creamy pink dregs of his milkshake cup. 

**0XX-XXX-XXXX:** Hey. 

**0XX-XXX-XXXX:** It’s Seto Kaiba. 

Atem stares at his screen in disbelief, jaw slackening and lips falling apart into a soft, surprised _o_.

He stares at his phone, flabbergasted, for an entire minute. He rereads the text, first one time, then another, before he realizes that there’s no way he’s misreading the words on the screen. It’s right there in front of him. 

He’s in total shock. He can’t even bring himself to believe that Seto Kaiba, his client, CEO of the biggest gaming company in Domino City (and, arguably, the world) was texting him, and he’s fairly certain that his eyes were playing one hell of a trick on him, because there’s no way in hell he’s texting Seto Kaiba. 

Incredulity and disbelief quickly mount into suspicion. His eyes narrow and his foot bounces beneath the clothed table as the wheels in his mind begin to work overtime. 

He wouldn’t put it past Yugi to _accidentally_ blurt out the news about his secret crush on one particular client to Joey. He also wouldn’t put it past Joey to text him with a hidden number from an app, and to pretend to be Seto Kaiba, if only just to fuck with him and get a good, memorable laugh out of that one time he _totally_ catfished Atem.

Atem sighs and drums his fingernails on the table, considering his options. 

He could play along for a while and beat Joey at his own game, or he could ignore the entire affair and leave Joey hanging. He briefly considers storming over to the men’s bathroom and catching Joey in the act, putting a stop to his prank before it could even begin to pick up the pace. 

Where was the fun in that?

 **Atem:** oh, hey! how did you get my number? lol :P 

Joey has never been too great at thinking on his feet, so Atem is impressed when his phone vibrates with a response almost immediately after he sent his text, as if he answer had already been rehearsed and prepared in advance. He reads the text doubtfully.

 **0XX-XXX-XXXX:** Asked for your number at your workplace 

He has to hand it to Joey. He’s clearly put a lot of thought into this elaborate little prank.

 **Atem:** Interesting :S 

**0XX-XXX-XXXX:** Hope that’s ok?

 **Atem:** _of course it’s ok, setoe_

 **0XX-XXX-XXXX:** It’s Seto

Amused, and a little spiteful, Atem adds the number to his contacts. 

**Atem:** oops yeah sorry autocorrect lol. *setoes 

**Setoes:** Stopped hearing that one after I made my first million (eyeroll emoji) 

Atem breathes out a laugh. He could already hear Kaiba’s annoyed voice, had been on the receiving end of it enough times to be well acquainted with his overly-clipped enunciation and the way his voice became a little deeper and rougher whenever he was displeased. 

Atem looks up and spots Joey emerging from the restroom. 

His phone buzzes in his hands at the same time that Joey walks to the table, not a single cellphone in sight except the the rectangular outline in his pocket. 

His brows draw into a frown. 

Just a delayed text message. Joey’s pranking him. There’s no way it could be anyone else. There’s especially no way that it could be Kaiba. 

His phone buzzes again, and he pales a little. Joey’s phone is still in his pocket. He meets those honey brown eyes across the table and Joey waves a hand in front of his face. 

“Hey, you alright ‘Temu? You’re lookin’ a little queasy. Was it the onion rings?” 

Atem mutely shakes his head and opens his phone. 

**Setoes:** I was half-kidding. It still trends on twitter every once in a while

 **Setoes:** You can’t make fun of my name and then stop texting me, asshole

Atem inhales sharply. He would laugh, because that sounds _just like something that Kaiba would say_ , but the idea strikes him with more fear than amusement now. 

**Atem:** Wait, so who is this really?

 **Atem:** _This isn’t a funny prank anymore._

 **Atem:** :/

 **Setoes:** _So you do know how to talk like a normal person?_

 **Setoes:** _I don’t know what you’re talking about. This isn’t a prank_

Just the answer he was fearing.

Atem screams at himself internally. He could feel his heart in his stomach, fully sunken and submerged in acid, and he quickly scrolls back up to the start of the conversation, mentally berating himself the entire time. Had he said anything embarrassing? He knows he did, but he can’t remember his exact words anymore, and a ball of dread pools in his stomach. 

His finger quickly skim up and down over the screen, scrolling through the text messages until he reaches the beginning of the conversation. He reads the messages frantically, eyes flitting over every word, and groans. 

A few typos, coupled with his irregular punctuation, and that whole thing about it being a prank and calling him _Setoes_ — he could only imagine what Kaiba was thinking.

God, why was he so embarrassing? 

He hastily types out what he hopes sound like a valid excuse. His lower lip throbs where his front teeth are clamped down on it.

 **Atem:** _oh hey! i’m so sorry, thought it was someone pretending to be you, troll_

He hits send before he realizes he phrased it wrong. 

**Setoes:** _That’s a new one one. Haven’t been called a troll before._

Open mouth, enter foot.

 **Atem:** no, not like that, nvm. I just didn’t think it was actually you

 **Atem:** but it is you! (thumbs up)

Kaiba takes longer to reply this time, and Atem feels a faint haze of disappointment and concern because he just _knows_ he screwed himself out of a conversation and professional working relationship with Kaiba.

So long, Seto, and so long gracious paychecks.

Distressed, he places his phone down on the table and plays idly with his straw, pushing it around inside his empty cup. His attention flits back to Yugi and Anzu, and to a lesser extent, Tristan and Joey.

He watches Yugi’s hand move subtly beneath the table, and he knows that he must be holding Anzu’s hand as secretly as possible, or so he thought, even though everyone at the table is well-aware of their hidden relationship.

Joey is completely oblivious, ruining the mood by chattering into a mildly annoyed-looking Yugi’s ear. 

Meanwhile, Tristan discreetly jams a finger up his nose to the first knuckle, retracting it just as quickly before anyone could notice. Atem wrinkles his own nose and is about to protest — _gross, don’t reach for the fries with that hand_ — when his phone buzzes twice and he ignores Tristan’s offense and snatches his phone up from the table. 

The preview screen reads _one (1) attachment_. Atem hastily tries to unlock his phone, fingers fumbling ineffectively over the keypad and inputting the wrong password two times. He unlocks his phone on the third try, after biting out a frustrated grunt, and taps on the notification. 

He chokes on a sharp inhale and actually drops his phone down on the table with an alarming clang. 

It’s a selfie, irrefutable evidence that he’s texting Kaiba, because there’s no way that anyone else would ever be able to get their hands on a photo like this. 

Soft, tousled brown hair hangs over Seto’s stormy blue eyes, casting shadows over the deep set of his brow. The photo is taken above, from an angle that allows Atem to see the rich brown of a leather chair and the faint light of the sunset creeping in from an open window. The gentle light casts a warm pink glow over Seto’s fair skin, softening the shadows of the sloping angles of his jaw and the elegant contour of his nose. His lips are soft and slightly parted, and the sight of them fills him with a sudden longing to feel them pressed against his own. 

Atem quickly saves the photo to his phone, even though deep down on some level he knows that it’s wrong, and that he shouldn’t— it’s intimate, secret, and perhaps meant to be deleted, but it’s his own private piece of Seto Kaiba, untouched by any magazines, press, or public. 

It sends a warm feeling fluttering in the hollow of his chest. 

Atem looks out the diner window at the romantic pinks and golden yellows of the setting sun, and he pictures Kaiba in his office somewhere in the heart of Domino City, sitting in his leather chair and snapping selfies. 

It’s so surreal and wildly unexpected that Atem can’t help but release the quiet, happy laugh that bubbled up in his chest. 

Yugi hears him laugh and looks at him curiously, but Atem just shakes his head with a smile. _Later_.

Right now, he just wants to bask in the moment and appreciate the photo for what it was— something personal, only for his eyes to see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I'm so sorry for the really delayed update and I just hope this chapter makes up for the long wait! Thank you so much to all the readers who keep checking in on this fic and for all the support you've provided so far! <3
> 
> I hesitated to name Duel Links. DM exists in this AU, but it's not really relevant to the plot (and obviously Atem isn’t the reigning champ, so it wouldn’t make sense to include him in the app), but the app _is_ important for future chapters! So instead, DL is like a data bank that allows duelists to carry their decks virtually, via the app, rather than lugging around a duel disk and deck everywhere! 
> 
> [Atem's hoodie](https://product-images.barneys.com/is/image/Barneys/505364770_1_TopFront?%24pdp_flexH%24) and [ his completed look.](https://product-images.barneys.com/is/image/Barneys/505364770_3_TopFrontQtr?%24pdp_flexH%24) Do you guys like these outfit inspos, or should leave it to the imagination? Let me know what you think!
> 
> Next update in two weeks! 
> 
> ~setokaibaes


	4. Chapter 4

Searching for Atem’s phone number and texting him had been a very big mistake. 

Kaiba can hardly bring himself to set his phone down. From the first minute he wakes up in the morning till the moment his eyes are too heavy lidded to continue fighting sleep and finally close, his phone is never further than an arm’s length away, just in case Atem texts him. 

That had been the case for almost two entire weeks, and this morning is no different from any other.

Kaiba nurses a mug of black coffee at his desk and stares groggily at a pile of monthly expenditure receipts, thinking, not for the first time, that his workload would be drastically reduced if he just trusted his employees to do their jobs correctly— but it was already a deeply ingrained habit to check and recheck every sum and every report, searching for even the tiniest mistake, before filing them away.

It was a habit that had been beaten into him, and hard as he tried, it wasn’t one he could easily let go without remembering the corporeal consequences of presenting a faulty report. 

He had implemented many changes to KaibaCorp, had revamped the entire corporation to suit his own business interests, and his entire mode of running the business was different than _his_ , but the ghost of Gozaburo still haunts many of his habits.

Kaiba represses the thought with a shudder and takes a deep drink of bitter coffee that had long since become room temperature. He leans onto his elbows with a deep sigh and watches the numbers on the report blur into an inky jumble. 

It’s eight in the morning and his eyes are heavy with an exhaustion that never seems to leave him until the very moment he’s supposed to rest. He smooths a thumb over his twitching eyelid and closes his eyes.

At his side, his phone vibrates, and one name immediately floats up to the surface of his thoughts. 

_Atem._

Kaiba refocuses his attention on the report, studies it attentively, convinces himself that he doesn’t need to check his cellphone the very minute it goes off, but he finds himself reading and re-reading the same string of numbers without processing, until he finally reaches for his phone and reads the message on the preview screen.

 ** _Atem:_** good morning! hope you have a good day, mr. bigshot 

Kaiba re-reads the message with a tiny smile and places it back down on the desk, facedown, while he thinks of a good response. It’s silent while he thinks, but the peaceful calm of his office is abruptly interrupted by the harsh ring of the phone on his desk. 

He picks up the receiver quickly, only briefly looking at the flashing red light on the monitor to check the line, and he snaps into the mouthpiece, “What?”

“Mr. Kaiba, Mr. Maximillion Pegasus is on the other line—”

“Tell him I’m busy,” Kaiba interrupts, rolling his eyes.

“I tried, sir, but he insists that it’s important.”

“I don’t have any important business to discuss with him.”

His secretary’s voice takes on a desperate edge, and Kaiba distantly remembers that he would have to look for a new secretary soon. It’s been one week since she handed in her resignation. 

“Mr. Kaiba, I don’t know what to tell him—”

“Then tell him I’m not in the office today,” Kaiba says irritably, pushing a hand through his hair. “Or better yet, _hang up_.”

“O-Okay.”

The call drops and Kaiba slams the receiver back into its cradle as if he had hung up on Pegasus himself. He leans back into his seat and wheels around with a frown, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window and thinking furiously. He had made it clear to Pegasus at the gala that he wanted nothing to do with him. He can’t imagine any sort of business proposition worth the risk of engaging his notoriously short temper. 

The phone rings shrilly again and Kaiba feels his eye twitch. He stands with enough force to send his chair rolling back and crashing into his desk, sending a cup of pens clattering to the floor, and he picks up the phone with an extra surge of annoyance. 

_“What?”_

“Now Kaiba, is that any way to respond to your longest-running business partner?” 

Kaiba stares with dead eyes at a plaque on the wall across the room. His vision momentarily warps with anger. 

“Kaiba? Kaiba, I know you can hear me!”

Pegasus’ lilting voice becomes impatient, and Kaiba’s attention snaps back to the call. His hand tightens around the receiver until his knuckles ache. 

“Why are you calling me, Pegasus?” 

“I’m calling to see how you’re doing, my dear boy!”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Alright, wait!” Pegasus cries, and he recoils, holds the speaker an inch away from his ear. “Such an impatient, rude little imp. Who taught you how to talk to your business partners?”

There’s a beat of silence. “Ah, right.”

Kaiba clenches his jaw and exhales slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. He forces himself to remain on the line just a minute longer. “What do you really want, Pegasus?”

“That’s more like it, Kaiba. I wanted to bring up the business proposition you so rudely didn’t consider during our little conversation at the gala!”

"No."

"Stubborn boy, _when_ will you finally move past the _incident,_ it's been years since it happened! Is that why you insist on denying me your company? We _never_ simply chat anymore!"

"Our relationship has always been strictly professional," Kaiba says dryly. He hears Pegasus heave an exaggerated sigh on the opposite line and imagines him throwing a hand dramatically over his forehead, parting that long, silvery hair and revealing the playful golden wink of his ocular prosthesis. Kaiba snorts. 

"You wound me, Kaiba. After all these years, you still won't consider me a friend!"

"Pegasus, you tried to steal my company!"

"But I did not! It was just good business! You, of all people, should _hardly_ hold that against me!"

"Outside of the existing contractual obligations we have already agreed upon, I want nothing to do with you Pegasus."

“Kaiba, don’t hang up—”

“I’m hanging up now.”

There’s a crackle of frantic yelling on the opposite line just before Kaiba slams the receiver back into its cradle and he sighs, massaging his pounding temples. 

By the time his pulse settles and he’s popped enough paracetamol to stall the dull, throbbing headache forming behind his eyes, he’s forgotten all about Atem’s message.

* * *

Kaiba’s in the middle of dinner when he realizes that Atem hadn’t texted him all day. 

This was strange, given their newfound correspondence, but he hadn’t given it much thought until that very moment, when he realized it had been a while since he’s checked his phone for any new emails or text messages. 

He chokes on a mouthful of yakitori when he registers he never sent the response he had intended to. 

Kaiba quickly covers his face with a napkin just in time to cough violently, shoulders spasming from the force of it. His face flushes a deep, unattractive red, and out of the corner of his watering eyes he can see Mokuba lowering a skewer to stare at him with a bewildered frown.

“Are you okay, Seto?” 

Kaiba nods, waves a hand for Mokuba to continue eating while he slowly recovers from the sudden coughing fit. A piece of chicken was still lodged in his throat painfully and he had yet to fully clear his airway, but he pats down his pocket for his phone and whips it out, unlocking the screen hastily and searching for the message from the morning. 

The timestamp reads 8:21 AM. 

More than twelve hours ago. 

Kaiba blames Pegasus for the distraction and hates him all that much more. 

“No phones at the table,” Mokuba chirps, and Kaiba gives him a look, but reluctantly slides his phone back into his pocket. It’s been twelve hours since he should have responded. Another fifteen minutes won’t make a difference. 

They continue to eat in silence, until Mokuba looks up with rounded cheeks stuffed with meat and a mouth smeared with teriyaki and asks, “So, who’re you textin’, Seto?”

Kaiba looks at him coolly and takes a sip of his water, chewing on a small cube of ice to stall for time. It eventually melts in his mouth and he forces himself to tell the partial-truth with a sigh. “A personal stylist, Mokuba. For public events. Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Mokuba looks confused, but he obediently holds on to his question long enough to chew –just two quick little movements of his jaw– before he swallows thickly and props his chin on his palm. “Why do you need a personal stylist? You never had one of those before.”

Kaiba shrugs.

“It helps with public perception,” he answers vaguely, and from the way Mokuba raises an eyebrow at him, he knows that he’s not convinced at all. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Then why are you texting an employee at… _10_ at night?” he asks suspiciously, and Kaiba finds himself on the receiving end of narrowed gray eyes. 

He has to tighten his lips to keep from smiling proudly. He’s raised a rebellious detective who doesn’t hesitate to question authority. 

It’s just a mild inconvenience when he _is_ the authority.

“I’m rescheduling an appointment,” he says with a shrug, and in the same breath he decides that he’ll stop by the store sometime that week to keep it from being a complete lie. “Just a reminder that I won’t be there in the morning.”

Mokuba continues to give him suspicious looks throughout the rest of the meal, and it takes every ounce of self-control Kaiba has to keep from doing anything that might plainly give away that he’s hiding a secret. 

He waits until after dinner to slink away into his study. It’s quiet, a reprieve from the constant assault on his ears —ringing phones, nagging secretaries, noisy interns and production team members— and he sinks into a small sofa in the corner of the room with a weary sigh. 

His eyelids are heavy with exhaustion and he distantly wonders whether he might be able to _finally_ fall asleep at a reasonable hour if he just climbs into bed right then and there. 

Instead, he rummages through the pockets of his jacket for his cellphone. The bright glare makes his eyes sting and his vision blur and he squints by instinct, dimming the screen light and activating the night mode, before he opens the text channel again and reads Atem’s text for the fourth time through half-closed lids. 

**_Atem: ___** __good morning! hope you have a good day, mr. bigshot_ _

Playful, teasing. Maybe even a little flirty, if he dared to think for even a second that Atem might have the tiniest inkling of interest in him.

Seto closes his eyes and runs a hand over his face, pressing comforting pressure into his strained eyes. 

He’s out of his depth in handling his feelings toward Atem. All he has is longing, and he has no idea what to do with the abundance of desire for a stranger he hardly even knows. Were they friends? Were they working up to something more?

Kaiba looks down at the contact name and he pictures Atem writing it in the morning, perhaps still sleepy-eyed and half asleep, and the mental image fills him with so much desire that his chest swells and aches with it. 

“You really don’t know what you do to me, do you?” he murmurs scornfully, glaring at the ten-word message and wishing he knew the exact sentiments behind it. All he knows are the sentiments it inspires in him, and he despises every ounce of longing in his chest with every ounce of hatred in his body. 

He doesn’t really care, he tells himself as he types, thumbs moving more slowly than usual. He doesn’t care how Atem responds, or if he responds at all, because he definitely doesn’t care about Atem. 

It’s a formality. He’s responding out of courtesy. He hits send.

 ** _Seto:_** Sorry, today was really busy.

 ** _Seto:_** Hope you had a good day.

When a reply doesn’t come in immediately, Kaiba decides that Atem’s either asleep or angry, and he goes to bed with disappointment weighing heavy in his gut.

* * *

He doesn’t expect a response. 

Kaiba tells himself that when he wakes up at six am to empty notifications. 

It would be silly to expect a response. 

His phone is silent throughout the entire morning. It’s quiet on the ride to work, it’s quiet on his ride up the elevator, it’s quiet when he walks through the reception to his office with a noncommittal grunt to his secretary’s timid ‘good morning.’

It’s quiet a full twenty-four hours ever since Atem sent the text the morning before. 

Seto drinks another cup of coffee while he waits for his computer to load, forces himself to type and to work through the trembling hands that he had become accustomed to years ago. Once he’s busy forwarding email reports to the appropriate department and signing off on payrolls and processing worker complaints from HR, he finally forgets all about Atem. 

For a few whole hours while Kaiba works in peace, everything feels almost as it did before he had ever met Atem.

* * *

Mokuba texts him at noon, and his distinct text tone —an obnoxious voice recording of Mokuba yelling _yeet!_ that had promptly scared him into sloshing coffee all over his desk the first time he had ever heard it— distracts him from the slowly-dwindling pile of work at his side.

 ** _Mokie:_** hey seto dont forget to eat lunch k

 ** _Mokie:_** isono said u look sick so make sure u eat

Kaiba sighs, but a glance at the display on his computer indicates that it’s been seven hours since he should have eaten. His stomach contorts painfully and he finally acknowledges that it needs something more substantial than another cup of coffee. 

Seto presses a button to talk to his secretary through the intercom and waits for the static to die down before raising his voice. 

“Hana, have you eaten lunch yet?” 

Static fizzles on the line before she answers nervously.

“No, Mr. Kaiba. Do you w—”

“Order lunch for yourself and order something for me as well. Charge it to the company.”

“O-Okay Mr. Kaiba. What do you want me to order for you?”

Her voice brightened considerably at the prospect of a free lunch, but she remained just as timid and nervous. It’s beginning to grate on Seto’s nerves. His eyes flick to the thick folder of applications for the open secretary slot and he makes a mental note to take that home. 

“I don’t care. I leave it to your good tastes.”

He hangs up with a sarcastic laugh and picks up his phone again. Three new messages.

 ** _Mokie:_** i know you’re reading these so dont ignore me. u better be eating

 ** _Mokie:_** i’m gonna be so mad if u pass out and get sick again just cuz you’re not taking care of yourself

 ** _Seto:_** That was one time, Mokuba. Had the secretary order food.

 ** _Mokie:_** k. btw going to the arcade today :D

Seto rolls his eyes and checks the third message.

 ** _Atem:_** it’s alright. some days are like that.

Atem. Kaiba’s so relieved to hear from him after the long silence that he catches himself smiling before he could help it. 

His smile quickly becomes a frown when he realizes that he’s acting unreasonably by allowing Atem to influence his feelings so strongly. 

_Stop being ridiculous, Seto,_ a voice echoes in his thoughts bitterly, and the voice sounds so eerily similar to Gozaburo’s that it raises the hair on his arms. 

Sobered, Kaiba reads the message again and quickly types back a careless response. 

**_Seto:_** Yeah.

 ** _Seto:_** How are you?

 ** _Atem:_** i’m alright. busy, you know how it is. you?

 ** _Seto:_** Also very busy. Hope you’re having a good day.

**_Atem:_** thanks, you too!

Kaiba pushes a hand through his hair and sets his phone on the desk facing downward.

* * *

Kaiba leaves work at six, and he’s warming the car engine when he’s struck by the brilliant idea to stake out the Gamble Coffee.

The interior of the coffee shop is small and cozy, tastefully designed with distressed wooden tables, red leather reading chairs, and stylish exposed brickwork. There’s a glass display of appetizing pastries and a stylish neon sign with the name GAMBLE COFFEE in bold and chalkboard displays of imported coffee beans and artisanal loose-leaf teas, prepared in a variety of ways. 

There’s a lot to take in, but what really catches Seto’s eye is the shock of unruly, tri-colored hair standing three feet away and one foot below. 

Kaiba stares blankly, and instead of the excitement he’s felt every time he’s seen Atem, a tight ball of dread forms in his gut. He had wandered into Atem’s territory with the intention of scouting out the place for a _future_ encounter, but he hadn’t counted on actually seeing him there just yet. 

And after their dry, uncomfortable conversation earlier, he’s not sure he even wants to talk to Atem for a while. 

Atem steps forward to order. His voice is too quiet for Seto to hear from a distance, but the barista smiles and carelessly tosses a comment that makes Atem grin wide enough that a dimple pops into his cheek.

Kaiba’s not sure what the feeling burning in his stomach is, but he doesn’t like it. He glares at the barista, taking note of his cute, bespectacled face and sourly wonders what he could have possibly said to make Atem grin like _that_. 

His mouth is still screwed into a grimace when Atem looks over his shoulder and their eyes lock for just a brief second. 

Kaiba blinks and relaxes his face, but before he could force a smile or strategize his next move, Atem looks back at the barista with the same charming grin. As if nothing had just happened, Atem steps toward the to-go counter, drawing his phone into his hand and distracting himself with something on the screen.

Seto has been the prime target of _many_ insults over the years, but he’s never felt so slighted and utterly dissed as he does in that moment. 

“Hey there! What can I get started for you?” 

Kaiba’s attention snaps back to the cute barista. He’s even cuter up close, freckled and kind-eyed, he thinks with disgust. 

“Ristretto,” he says stiffly, and takes a brief moment’s comfort when he sees the confused look that passes over his face. 

The barista stares at him with wide eyes and stutters, "I'm sorry sir, we don't-"

"I don't care. To go."

He pays, and when he turns, still sliding his card back into his wallet, he looks up in time to see Atem studying him with a curious expression, until he realizes he’s been caught and he quickly looks away with darkening cheeks. 

Seto approaches, sees Atem’s body shift away and tense, and he comes to a stop about a foot away. Atem doesn’t make a move to greet him, and even though it makes Seto’s stomach contort unpleasantly, he returns the cold shoulder.

What the fuck? 

They stand in awkward silence. Atem stares determinedly at his phone and his thumb moves in slow swipes across the screen, while Kaiba stands and glares at the barista behind the counter, as if this uncomfortable situation were somehow his fault. 

Seto can only assume that he’s distracted with some sort of game and he dares to sneak a furtive glance at Atem’s face in profile. His nose is snub and cute, and there’s a dainty golden hoop in his nostril that he had never noticed before, but Seto’s more surprised by the soft roundness of his cheeks and his lidded eyes, framed in such a way with inky, jet-black eyeliner that his eyes look different. More open and innocent, less intense and captivating. 

He can’t explain why, but he feels as though he’s seeing Atem for the first time, again. 

And he’s less attractive to him the second time around.

Kaiba’s violently thrown off by the sudden realization, but before he could turn to question Atem and demand why the hell he was being ignored, the barista calls out,

“I have a latte with extra foam and two pumps of vanilla to go!”

Atem steps forward with a visible look of relief, takes the small disposable cup from the counter into a delicate hand, and leaves without so much as a glance over his shoulder.

Kaiba watches him leave with an odd, sinking feeling in his gut, and he stares at the glass door long after Atem’s disappeared from sight. 

Maybe it was just a short-lived crush after all. 

* * *

Kaiba chews on the inside of his lip and stares at the message he just sent. 

**_Seto:_** Did I piss you off the other day?

It’s late, just after midnight, but Atem replies almost immediately to his text. 

**_Atem:_** no? 

**_Atem:_** if this is about canceling your appointment last week, don’t worry about it!

 ** _Atem:_** you can make it up to me the next time you drop by the store k? 

Kaiba considers bringing up the run-in at the cafe, but another message rolls in just before he could ask. 

**_Atem:_** going to bed now, have an early start tomorrow. ttyl, goodnight!

Seto sighs. 

**_Seto:_** Goodnight. 

* * *

He had to see Atem again. 

The encounter in the coffee shop haunted him for the rest of the evening and well into the night, even after the brief conversation. Kaiba couldn’t forget the way Atem gave him a cold shoulder and even seemed confused by his presence, and he couldn’t forget the strange, eerie sensation that he had been staring at someone he had never met in his life. 

Kaiba finds himself in the elevator at 7:03 in the morning, three minutes late for work and nowhere near where he should be on a weekday morning. 

There’s really no excuse for it. In just one week, he’s bought enough clothing to last the next six seasons, given his affinity for monochrome staples he could wear year-round, and he’s fairly certain that there’s no way he could justify visiting the same boutique three times in the span of two weeks.

But he can’t shake off the prickling sensation that he needed to see Atem. 

Kaiba’s eyes drift to the row of polished, glassy buttons on the control panel and he distantly wonders if Atem will ignore him again, maybe even push him off to another co-worker, when he suddenly realizes that there is neither an escape button nor a way out of the situation if that were to happen.

It’s always in the elevator that he realizes just how irrationally he’s behaving, when it’s too late to turn back without being seen. 

Frantically, he begins to wrack his mind for a decent excuse that would explain his presence for the third time— _you’re handsome and I can’t stop thinking about you_ just isn’t good enough, and Kaiba would sooner choke on his own tongue than blurt out a confession like that to Atem’s face. 

The elevator comes to a jerking stop and Kaiba is so deep in thought that he nearly pitches forward and crashes into the button panel face-first. 

His time is up and he has no excuse to show for it. He can only hope a loaded wallet will be enough to put off any suspecting questions. 

The elevator doors begin to slide open with a sweet chime, and Seto looks ahead to the reception desk, where he’s certain that Atem will be standing. His mind is already racing with thoughts about him, burning with curiosity to find out what he’s wearing today and whether he’s wearing that eyeliner that makes his wide eyes flash like polished garnet, and why it had made him look so different just the day before. 

Instead, he’s met with confusion when he sees an unfamiliar old woman sitting behind the counter, thoroughly immersed in flipping through the pages of a glossy fashion magazine. She’s exactly what he had pictured he would find the first time he had come to Vetements, right down to the elegant tortoise-rimmed spectacles, brocade jacket, and neatly swept-up, silvery hair.

It’s bland, precisely what he expected of haute couture, and he misses the sight of Atem’s bold and _sexy_ style. 

Disappointment settles in the pit of his stomach at the same time that a rush of relief washes over him. He has time to think of a proper reason to approach Atem. He’s been given a second opportunity to rethink his approach and come in again with a real strategy. 

When he doesn’t move, continues to stand blocking the doors from sliding shut, which causes the elevator to emit a frantic, staccato beeping sound, the old woman looks up from the fashion magazine in her hands and stares him down with an irritable, judgmental glare. 

Kaiba only narrowly refrains from the urge to roll his eyes. It’s the same look Atem had given him each time he dared make a suggestion or criticized a garment that had been selected for him, as if he had been personally offended by Kaiba’s every suggestion.

Such a scandalized glare must be a requirement in their line of work. 

She continues to give him a strange, hostile look from behind the thin frames of her chic reading glasses and clears her throat loudly, twice, and when Kaiba doesn’t respond at all, she coughs deliberately. 

An unspoken question — _what do you want?_ — hangs in the air between them like static, and it’s a test of wills to see who will break the ice first. 

Kaiba meets her gaze, level and steady. He pauses, and without breaking eye contact, pushes the button on the elevator panel to close the doors. As the doors begin to slide shut, he forces a polite, tight smile, says _wrong floor!_ and sags against the mirrored wall with a sigh of equal disappointment and relief. 

There were some things he needed to do before he could come back again.

* * *

Kaiba cancels his appointments on Tuesday afternoon, much to his secretary’s chagrin, and spends the rest of the evening at a corner table in Gamble Coffee.

Gamble Coffee is a popular location among the students from the local college nearby, Kaiba quickly learns, when the overwhelming noise of loud conversations and obnoxious laughter, clinks of spoons and silverware against porcelain plates, and the hiss of milk steamers and whrr of coffee grinders form a headache that pulses at his temples. 

When a burst of noisy laughter erupts for the fourth time from a small group of four seated in a corner table, Kaiba irritably rubs his twitching eye and considers leaving. His eyes flick impatiently toward the entrance to the shop and he continues to observe the customers who enter, scans the length of their body, and looks away when it’s not Atem. 

People are entering and leaving at a steady rate, but the one person Kaiba’s waiting for has yet to make an appearance. 

He has no guarantee that Atem would appear, but their conversation the night before had certainly suggested that he was going to visit the coffee shop at some point during the day.

Kaiba lazily scrolls through the stream of texts again. 

**_Seto:_** What are your plans for tomorrow? 

**_Atem:_** have to go to class and prepare a study guide for an exam 

**_Atem:_** lots of coffee and a whole lot of boring (skull) 

**_Seto:_** Good luck with that. 

When he looks up from his phone, Atem walks through the door. 

Atem stands at the counter, facing away from the seating area, which only gives Kaiba a clear view of his hair and the line of his back. A pink backpack is strapped to his narrow shoulders, and his arms are exposed by the cut of a tight black tank top, which blends seamlessly into torn black jeans. 

Even at a distance Kaiba could see the lean lines of his small, compact body. He remembers the ripples of sinuous muscle Atem showed on display the time he wore that unstylish sleeveless hoodie, and his pants suddenly feel one size too small.

Atem collects his receipt and begins to walk toward the tables. 

He’s imagined the run-in hundreds of times in the long two hours he’s spent in the cafe, waiting for Atem to appear, and every scenario he pictures ends the same way. 

Atem would inevitably see him sitting alone in a two-seat table. Recognition would light across his features and he would grin the dimpled smile that makes Kaiba fidget in place and smile tentatively in return. Atem would approach and coyly ask to sit in the empty seat in front of him with the transparent excuse that _the cafe is full, Mr. Kaiba. I have no place else to sit._

Kaiba could practically already hear the rich, low murmur of his voice, barely audible above the din of the cafe, and he has to cross his legs to hide the sign of rising interest between his legs. 

He watches, beginning to sit up in anticipation, as Atem rounds the corner and scans the room for a table. 

Not a single one of the scenarios he had rehearsed in his mind could have prepared him for the way Atem walks right past him to join the rowdy table in the corner. 

His sudden presence is met with loud cheering and one distinctly loud and obnoxious, “Heya buddy!” from a voice so grating that Kaiba wanted to claw at his own eardrums. It’s all he could do to keep his jaw from dropping in disbelief. 

Kaiba watches, aghast, as Atem delivers that grin at _them_ while slinging his backpack over the back of a chair and sliding into a seat between a tall blond, who appeared to be the noisiest in the group, and a pretty brunette with stylish bobbed hair. He recoils when Atem kisses the woman on the cheek, and forces himself to remember that kisses among friends are conventional, but he doesn’t miss the way that his hand lingers on her bare shoulder just two seconds too long to be friendly. 

Kaiba is rarely wrong in his assessments of character, but he feels as if the floor moves out from under him when he questions, for the first time, whether he could have been completely wrong about Atem from the start— was he even interested in men?

There’s another burst of laughter from the table. The noise adds to his confusion, adds to the building pressure at his temples that’s beginning to give way to a tension headache, and Kaiba tries but he can’t peel his eyes away from the table. 

He watches with growing mortification as Atem places a hand on the woman’s thigh, neither stroking nor caressing, simply touching in an easy gesture of comfort and familiarity, and the shock of humiliation and disbelief that he could have been _so wrong_ from the start rises hot in his throat like a surge of stomach acid. 

Atem is straight, and from the looks of it, he even has a _girlfriend_ , a beautiful girl who lowers her hand discreetly atop his and entwines their fingers together. 

Kaiba grits his jaw.

It would explain why Atem had ignored him the last two times they had met. He was smart enough to know that Kaiba was texting him out of personal interest, because not _once_ in the last week had they talked about clothing or scheduling an appointment. 

He feels sick. His stomach burns hot with a mix of fury and betrayal, humiliation and resentment that he could have been so led-on as to pine for Atem. 

He stands abruptly, jarring the table with his knees in the process, and all eyes on the floor turn in his direction when a silver spoon drops from the porcelain cup and clinks loudly against the metallic base of the table, bouncing on the floor in an embarrassing scene. 

Kaiba walks out in a fury, feels the curious eyes boring holes into his back, and he doesn’t dare to look over his shoulder to see if Atem’s looking at him. It would be more than he could handle to see those crimson eyes locked onto his— but it would be even worse if they weren’t.

* * *

“Hey, so that was totally weird, right?”

Joey is anything but discreet in his nosiness, twisting his torso and propping an elbow on the back of the chair to get a second look at the tall man who had dramatically stormed out of the seating area. 

“Is it just me or does that guy look kinda familiar?”

Anzu hums in agreement and opens her mouth to say so, until she feels Yugi tense beside her and she looks at him inquisitively. His eyes are glued to his receipt and the hand that isn’t holding hers is tensed on his thigh, and she knows from the tight set of his mouth that something’s on his mind. 

“Yugi,” she says softly, and her voice catches everyone’s attention. “Do you know him?”

Yugi blinks, and when he realizes that all eyes are turned on him, he frowns and shakes his head. “No, but I saw him here a few days ago.” 

He visibly hesitates. “He was staring at me back then and I thought it was nothing, but he was staring again when I walked in…”

“Now that’s just _weird_ ,” Tristan declares. He stretches his arms out in front of his chest and weaves his fingers together, cracking his knuckles. “If he bothers you again, let me have a go at him.”

The way he cracks his knuckles becomes decidedly sinister. 

“It’s okay, Tristan.”

“Hey, you know who that creep reminds me of?” Joey says suddenly, sitting upright with a strange expression on his face, as if he had just remembered something important. He doesn’t wait to answer his own question. “That fancy-pants rich guy on those game magazines in Atem’s room! The one who owns some sorta gaming company...”

Something clicks in Yugi’s mind and he frowns. “Seto Kaiba?”

“Yeah, that’s the guy!” 

Tristan loudly sucks air through his straw and pushes his empty glass of iced coffee to the side, dangerously close to the edge of the edge of the table. He props his chin on his palm and drawls, “Seto Kaiba? Use your brain, Jou, there’s no way some rich dude like that would be here!”

Joey wrinkles his nose. “I hate to agree with ya, but you’re right. Someone with that kinda money probably imports all kinds of fancy coffee seeds in a private jet and has it specially made or somethin’ like that.” 

He pauses, then reaches an arm around Tristan’s neck to pull him into a mock-headlock. “So, Tristan, how’s it feel to be right for once?”

“Knock it off!” 

“Make me!”

Someone’s elbow knocks the empty glass off the table, but before it could crash to the floor, Atem snags the cup just as it tips over the ledge and pushes it back onto the table. The green straw bounces past the rim and falls harmlessly to the floor. 

Joey looks up with wide, honey-brown eyes. 

“Atem! Hey pal, talk about one helluva entrance!”

Everyone blows out a sigh of relief, and everyone forgets about the Seto Kaiba-lookalike.

* * *

Kaiba’s hands are wrapped in a white-knuckled grip around the steering wheel, and his foot is glued to the accelerator as he races down the streets of Domino, heading for the outskirts of the city, far from the noise of college students and industrial coffee machines and obnoxious groups of friends and _liars._

His lower lip is clamped between his teeth as he speeds down the narrow streets, and when he slams his foot down on the brake to avoid running directly into ongoing traffic, his teeth sink in painfully and burst the tender skin. 

Kaiba’s mouth floods with the metallic tang of blood and his mood worsens all that much more, but the foul taste in his mouth and the sharp pain of his split lip grounds him and distracts him from the frustration bubbling beneath his skin. 

He lowers a tinted window and spits out a glob of red-tinged saliva and blood, briefly catching the surprised expression on the face of the driver in the car beside him, before he flips them off out of spite and raises the window. 

As soon as the light turns green, he takes off racing again, and he leaves the owner of the little blue minivan, no doubt surprised that he had been so rudely flipped off by a total stranger, and the heart of Domino in his wake. 

The mansion looms in the horizon far sooner than he had hoped. After a cursory glance at the fuel gauge on the dashboard, he steps on the pedal and drives away from the guarded gates of the property, speeding until his thoughts are drowned by the roar of the engine. 

When he walks into the mansion later that night, after hours of driving in the isolated trails in the surrounding fields around the manor, until his gas tank was running on its final dregs and had just enough to carry him back to the mansion, Mokuba springs up from the sofa, takes one look at his face, and sits back down. 

“Hey Seto,” he says cautiously, picking up on the tension in his shoulders and the moody set of his mouth. “How was work?”

He watches Kaiba remove his shoes by the door and carelessly drop his briefcase onto a small table with a loud clang, and when Mokuba sees his split lip, now dried and crusted over with dark blood, he frowns and looks visibly torn between remaining in place and jumping up to investigate up close. 

Curiosity wins, and he springs up and runs to Seto, standing on the tips of his toes to get a closer look —though not by much— at his split lip. “What happened?”

Kaiba bites his lip thoughtlessly and winces. “Hit my mouth with a coffee cup. Don’t worry about it.” 

Mokuba scrunches his nose. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

There’s a moment of silence, before Kaiba answers in a strange voice. 

“Just a little.” 

* * *

Long, tired fingers wearily undo the knot of the tie, and Kaiba almost casts it to the side without a second thought, until he remembers that this particular tie was a gift from Mokuba and it was an especially delicate hand-dyed silk tie, which Mokuba had taken the time to personally embroider with his initials. 

He opens the closet to store it properly on a tie rack, and stares at the dozens of shirts and sweaters Atem had chosen for him. He runs a hand over a silky-soft cashmere sweater, delicate and perfect for the oncoming fall, and wistfully recalls the way Atem ran a hand down his back to smooth away the wrinkles. 

The memory makes him frown, and he stares at the rest of the clothing in his wardrobe resentfully. He had been reading into those touches the entire time. Atem had been playing him like a fool. 

The only thing that stops Kaiba from ripping out the contents from his closet in a rage is that it’s long past midnight, and Mokuba is sound asleep in the room across the hall. 

Kaiba releases his white-knuckled grip on the sweater, sees the wrinkles stretched across the fabric where his hand had been, and he forces himself to breathe in calmly through his nose. 

His phone pings unexpectedly. 

Kaiba quickly rolls up the tie and tucks it into a tie organizer, before reaching for his phone with despicable eagerness. 

_**Atem:**_ Hey, I didn’t hear from you today. Is everything okay?

Kaiba reads the text message and he’s so stunned by Atem’s audacity to act as if everything was okay that he stares at his screen, open-mouthed and indignant, as if Atem could see his expression. 

Why the hell was Atem still texting him?

Setting his phone down on his nightstand, Kaiba undresses for bed, mind running furiously all the while. 

Was Atem taunting him? Or did he simply not realize that Kaiba _knew_ , that his stupid game was over?

Why doesn’t he ever know what the hell Atem’s trying to say?

He remembers his abrupt exit in the cafe earlier and his ears grow hot. Was Atem alluding to that? 

Kaiba’s beginning to hate him. 

He snatches his phone from its stand and types furiously. 

_**Seto:**_ Everything’s perfect. 

Atem responds quickly. Kaiba settles into bed, resting against the pillows that were propped against the headboard, and glares at his screen. 

_Now_ Atem has time for him. 

As much as he wishes he could ignore Atem and pretend he didn’t exist, Kaiba has the time for him too. 

* * *

_**Setoes:**_ Everything’s perfect.

Atem reads the message through sleepy, heavily-lidded eyes. He’s cocooned in a light, airy bedsheet, comfortable enough to drift off to sleep right then and there, but he fights off the drowsiness and forces himself to keep his eyes open long enough to text Kaiba. 

_**Atem:**_ That’s good! 

_**Atem:**_ Today was kind of a long day. Class, work, and a headache :/

 _ **Setoes:**_ Why are you texting correctly all of a sudden?

Atem balks.

 _ **Atem:**_ New phone! I just haven’t turned off autocorrect yet 

_**Atem:**_ Might leave it on though hahaha

Kaiba doesn’t reply immediately. Atem distantly thinks that maybe he fell asleep, and his own eyes are beginning to close, when his phone vibrates again. 

_**Setoes:**_ Smart choice.

 _ **Atem:**_ LOL did my texts bother you before..?

 _ **Setoes:**_ No. 

_**Atem:**_ Well ok :/

 _ **Atem:**_ I’m tired and I’m falling asleep already, so I’ll talk to you tomorrow, k? Goodnight, grumpy 

Atem’s eyes blur and his thumb misses the _send_ icon, but before he could notice his unsent message, he locks his phone and barely manages to put it back on the nightstand before his eyes close and he passes out soundly. 

He wakes up to the shrill blare of his alarm a short six hours later. 

Atem groans and throws an arm over his closed eyes, while the other pats down his nightstand to reach his vibrating, noisy cellphone, and he hits the home button with his thumb out of habit. 

He’s sleepy, his lids are heavy, and he wants nothing more than to curl up in bed for another hour, but he could hear the clatter of dishes shifting in the cabinets downstairs, and when he closes his eyes and inhales through his nose, he could catch the faint scent of food wafting up from the kitchen. He thinks of eggs, pictures tamagoyaki, and when his mouth begins to water and his stomach rumbles noisily, he decides it’s time to get up.

Yugi’s sitting at the table when Atem finally makes his way downstairs, chin cupped in his palm and eyes sleepy and heavy lidded as he yawns into a small bowl of miso. 

It’s Saturday morning and he has yet to change out of the well-loved pajamas he’s worn for years, baby blue and covered in little yellow stars that were faded and nearly invisible after so many years of being worn to bed and so many spins in the washing machine. 

“Good morning, Yugi.”

“Mmmntm.”

Atem thinks he can make out the sound of his name in the unintelligible grunt he receives in response, and he grins. Yugi was the furthest thing from a morning person, and if he was awake this early on a weekend, it was only because he had to have plans with Anzu or Joey. 

Atem would ask, but Yugi looks ready to fall asleep right into his food. He cooks, and by the time that he’s finished plating two servings of tamagoyaki, before Yugi could even ask to steal a bite, Yugi’s eyes are just the slightest bit more wide awake. 

They sit and eat in comfortable silence. Yugi sips his tea and Atem his lemon water, neither saying a word, until he scrunches his nose and sits upright. “Atem?”

“Yes?”

“You said you work with Seto Kaiba, right? Like, the big businessman?” 

“I do.” 

“The hot guy...the hot guy with the blue eyes?”

Atem sighs dreamily into his cup.

“Yes, the most beautiful blue eyes…”

When Yugi doesn’t say anything, Atem looks up, and the troubled expression on his face piques his interest. Atem leans in on the table, propping up an elbow and cupping his chin in his palm. His plate of tamagoyaki lies easily forgotten, as does Yugi’s bowl of miso.

“Why are you asking?” 

“I think...I think Seto Kaiba has been following me,” Yugi confesses, and a beat of awkward silence forms between them. 

Atem blinks, stares at him in confusion, and laughs. When Yugi doesn’t join him, he freezes and makes a face. “I’m afraid I don’t understand this joke, Yugi—”

“It’s not a joke, Temu, I’m serious,” Yugi insists, and an uncomfortable blush spreads over his cheeks. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’m pretty sure I saw him twice at Gamble and I think his car was following me last week when I went to Joey’s place…”

He falters, looks unsure for a moment. “Well, I’m not sure about the car…but it’s a weird coincidence, don’t you think? A guy who looks like Seto Kaiba shows up at Gamble and stares at me the entire time?”

“Maybe you have an admirer,” Atem says weakly, and Yugi shakes his head. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, Yugi, but...it is a little strange.” 

Yugi ignores him and pushes a hand through his blond bangs, brow furrowed as he thinks out loud.

“Plus, then the car would make sense! Someone like Kaiba could afford that kind of car!”

“Yugi...”

Yugi mumbles unintelligibly under his breath until Atem brings his worked-up muttering to a stop by cupping his face in his hands and pressing his thumbs into the dimples in his cheeks. That makes him pause and frown, confusion breaking across his face until he pushes away the hands at his cheeks.

He looks annoyed, but the agitated bouncing of his leg beneath the table stops and Yugi calms himself with a deep inhale, to Atem’s relief. 

“Yugi, do you even know what Seto Kaiba looks like?” he asks gently, and Yugi glares at him reproachfully. 

“Of course I do! You’re not the only one who had a celebrity crush on him in high school.” 

Atem flushes at that and murmurs an apology. Yugi’s face softens and he touches Atem’s hand over the table. 

“Look, I could be wrong,” he admits, and rubs at a hot cheek with his other hand. “I guess it _could_ be any other tall, handsome stranger with blue eyes.”

Atem breathes out a laugh and nods. “You’re right.” 

“You could’ve been right about that admirer earlier.” 

“I wouldn’t be surprised at all.” 

“Still, he looked an awful lot like Kaiba…” 

“But really, what are the chances?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are finally taking off and I hope you’re as excited as I am!


	5. Chapter 5

Atem’s suddenly furious. “Are you kidding me? You really were following Yugi!”

Now it’s Kaiba’s turn to feel confused, and he gives Atem a strange look. “What the hell is a Yugi?” 

“He’s my identical twin brother!”

And everything goes to shit.

* * *

_Two days earlier…._

Mokuba marches directly into Seto’s study after dinner with a short stack of paperwork tucked neatly into the crook of his elbow. 

“Hey Setoes,” he chirps, and if he notices how Kaiba’s head jerks up, more of a response than he normally receives, he doesn’t make a comment on it. “I’ve narrowed down the list of candidates!”

“Candidates for what?”

“For secretary, duh!” 

“Oh, right,” Kaiba says blandly, and returns his gaze to the document on his computer screen. 

He had forgotten that he had let Mokuba take charge of finding him a new secretary.

“Look, there’s three that I think sound extra qualified for the job, but...I think you’ll like one of them more than the others.”

Mokuba’s voice raises playfully at the end, and Kaiba isn’t sure why. He waves a hand at his younger brother and doesn’t bother putting down his pen to leaf through the papers that had been so carefully sorted, sticky-noted, and color-coded. 

“Pick out the one you like most.”

Mokuba blinks, and his self-assured expression melts into a small frown. 

“Don’t you wanna see them, Seto? Their qualifications or profiles or something?”

“No. You’ve already seen to that, Mokuba, so I’m leaving the decision to you.”

Mokuba hesitates, hands lingering on the spine of the folder for just a moment. He seems to be on the verge of spilling something out, but when Kaiba looks up, unsatisfied by the lack of response, he looks away without saying a word. 

“Nanase Hinata,” he finally mumbles, and skims through the papers to pull out a particular application. “No formal education, but almost eight years of experience in—”

“That’s great. Hire them and tell them to be in the office at five on Monday.”

“Wait, don’t you want to hear about—”

“I’m busy, Mokuba,” Kaiba says curtly, and to soften the blow, he sighs and fixes Mokuba a steady look. “I trust your judgment. You know I don’t do that with just anyone. So hire her.” 

“Actually, she’s—”

“ _Hire her_.” 

Mokuba closes his mouth with a snap of his jaw and scrutinizes him for a long moment, before a deceptively sweet smile spreads across his face. Kaiba doesn’t trust it for a second, but he can’t explain why. 

“Fine. I’ll hire her.”

“Good.”

Once Mokuba leaves the room, Seto leans into his desk and presses his face into his hands, exhaling slowly. He could feel the exhaustion burning behind his eyelids, gathering into unshed tears from staring at his computer without blinking, and he rubs the moisture from his eyes with the heel of his hand until spots dance in his vision. 

He’s been distracted ever since he found out about Atem. The sight of him kissing the mystery woman’s cheek plays in his mind in a cruel loop, and he can’t stop thinking about Atem’s hand on her thigh, innocent, but intentional. 

Every time he thinks of it, he can feel the emotions brewing in the cavity of his chest and trying to claw their way out.

Jealousy, fury, confusion, hurt…

It’s an interesting combination to experience for the first time.

Kaiba raises his head from his hands and stares blankly at his open palms. His vision is swimming strangely, the lines in his palms are distorted, and he realizes with a jolt of surprise that his eyes are still watering. He blinks and catches a tear on his lashes before it could fall to his cheek.

He stares at his damp fingertip, perplexed, and tries to blink away the remainder of the unshed tears brimming at his waterline. 

It must be the stress, he thinks. The pending project release, the new secretary, approval for project funding, the sheer amount of time he’s spent staring at a computer screen that morning alone… it’s all beginning to get to him. 

Atem’s betrayal is just the shitty sprinkle of sugar on top. 

There was no way he’s actually _crying._

That would just be ridiculous. 

  


* * *

_**_**Atem:**_ **_ Hi Kaiba! I hope you have a good day today!

Atem watches the blinking cursor on his screen and bites the inside of his cheek to suppress a sigh. He had noticed that Kaiba’s response times have been slowing exponentially over the course of the last week, and he idly wonders how long it will take for Kaiba to respond to his text this time, if he even replies at all. 

The letters blur together and become a jumbled mess swimming in his vision, and he tries to smother the rising disappointment in his chest when Kaiba doesn’t respond after two, three, four minutes. He puts his phone down, picks it up again, checks the time. Seven minutes. The numbers on the screen change. Eight minutes. 

It’s going to be one of those days. 

Atem locks his phone with the quiet _snick_ of the screen going dark and stares glumly at the men’s fashion magazine spread out in front of him. The model on the page has a similar spindly build as Kaiba, and Atem can’t help but picture dressing him in that same outfit —navy pants, matching fitted jacket, gunmetal blue shirt underneath— and taking it right off. 

Frustration boils under his skin and he glares at his cellphone as if it’s responsible for Kaiba’s untimely responses. 

“Why won’t you text me?” He drags out the final syllable and cups his face in his hands, palming at his hot cheeks. 

Atem casts another hopeful look at his cellphone, but the screen remains black, and with a sour twist of his lips, he resigns himself to placing it on the desk, facedown. 

What the hell had he said that made Kaiba want to stop talking to him? 

_He could be busy at work._

The quiet voice of reason in his mind is quickly silenced by the panicky, irrational fear that Kaiba doesn’t want to talk to him anymore, had lost interest in his company, he will never see Seto Kaiba again, except perhaps on magazine covers or news broadcasts— 

Atem checks the time on his phone. 11:46 in the morning. He wonders if Kaiba takes lunch, or if he works right through the entire afternoon. 

_**_**Atem:**_ **_ Hey, you haven’t rescheduled your appointment yet! I’m available this afternoon, if you want to come over later.

Atem waits two minutes before blasting another text. 

_**_**Atem:**_ **_ We have a great new collection. It was practically made for you. I have a few items set aside just for you.

He pauses, wonders if he sounds a little too eager… then sends an entire slew of more texts in quick succession. 

_**Atem:**_ Let me know when you have time to come over. 

_**Atem:**_ I’ll make time to see you! 

_**Atem:**_ I’m working all week. Hope to see you soon.

* * *

_Pzzzt._

Kaiba picks up the sound of his cellphone buzzing inside his desk drawer and he promptly ignores it. He manages to forget about it and continue working, until it vibrates again a few minutes later. 

_Pzzzt._

There it goes again. Kaiba briefly entertains the idea of checking his phone —it could be Mokuba, he thinks, but he knows better— he could identify Mokuba’s obnoxious ringtone from a mile away. 

It has to be Atem.

He ignores it and stares at the figures on his expenditure report, squeezing his pen in a tight grip until his knuckles are bone-white. 

_Pzzzt._

Kaiba yanks open the drawer to look at his phone, annoyed by the barrage of incoming text messages. It’s practically rattling his desk with the force of the vibrations, and his feigned, cool indifference is beginning to wear out— he _needs_ to know what Atem is saying. 

He gives in and reaches for his phone. Another message rolls in just as he unlocks the screen and he looks over them quickly, becoming increasingly exasperated with every chunk of text he reads. 

Atem is still pretending to want to see him. 

Seto places his phone face down and plants his elbows on his desk, steepling his fingers. 

A rebellious bit of hope that Atem could actually be sincere rises in his chest. Kaiba quickly suffocates it and forces himself to face reality.  
He had seen Atem’s betrayal with his own two eyes. He knows that Atem has been playing him for a fool this entire time and that he was after something— personal profits, or a bigger paycheck, or even worse, some sort of dirt to snitch to the press. 

Kaiba pales just _imagining_ the field day that the media would have if Atem dared to breathe a word of his indiscretions. He could already picture the headlines: 

_Seto Kaiba, out of his (new) closet!_

_Seto Kaiba, Japan’s most eligible bachelor— bachelor for life!_

_Seto Kaiba is a homosexual._

Kaiba presses his fingernail to his lower lip, worrying his thumb between his teeth, as he frantically racked his thoughts for anything that Atem could leak to the press. Had he been too obvious in his attraction toward Atem? 

The sudden stress makes him feel an entire decade older. Kaiba sweeps a hand over his face and sighs. 

His own personal crisis is going to become a sensational media disaster. It would be the biggest scandal involving KaibaCorp in years.

But he can’t keep himself from texting Atem back. 

_**Seto:**_ I’m busy today.

Atem’s reply comes immediately; he had hardly locked his screen before it lit up and vibrated again, and he quickly unlocks it with his thumb, clinging to every word.

 _ **Atem:**_ That’s okay! I’ll be in all week. 

Then—

 _ **Atem:**_ I’m sure we can find time to make it work.

 _He sounds desperate. Must’ve already blown his last paycheck,_ Seto thinks vindictively. He drums his fingers on his desk. 

Atem doesn’t know that he knows the nature of this game. He could play along and beat Atem at whatever the hell this is. 

_**Seto:**_ I’m excited to see the new collection. 

_**Seto:**_ And you. 

He stares for a long moment, thumb hovering over the **send** icon, before quickly erasing the message, watching each word disappear slowly, letter by letter. 

Atem clearly thinks the same way that he does. 

_**Atem:**_ I’m excited to show it to you. And to see you too.

 _Leave me the fuck alone_ , Seto seethes. He can’t completely crush his hope that Atem’s interest is genuine. His rational mind knows that he’s being deceived, he’s going to be _hurt_ , but there’s a stray strand of hope in his chest he hasn’t felt in years. It makes his heart race a little faster and his stomach twist in knots that make him want to throw up. 

_**Seto:**_ Me too. (thumbs up)

 _ **Atem:**_ See you soon ❤

Putting his phone down with a small smile, Seto finally acknowledges the angry rumble of his stomach that he has been ignoring for the better part of an hour. He stands with a loud pop of his joints and smooths down the faint wrinkles in his suit jacket before stepping out of the double doors of his office. 

* * *

The warm summer air fills his lungs once he exits the building. The afternoon crowds of office workers and high school students on a lunch-rush lend him just a touch of anonymity as he walks briskly down the main street, easily camouflaged amidst the crowds. 

Kaiba waits impatiently when he reaches the crosswalk, scanning the crowds that lay ahead and letting his gaze wander. It falls upon a familiar head of unruly hair and he stiffens, feeling his legs lock in place, unable to move forward when the light flashes green, even as the crowd surrounding him begins to disperse and cross the street. 

Atem. 

His mind screams at him to keep walking, he’s not ready for such an unexpected encounter, but Atem is drawing closer every second that Kaiba’s legs remain glued to the sidewalk. His mouth is suddenly dry, and even if he could think of what to say, he’s sure that he wouldn’t have a voice to speak with. 

As he takes a deep breath and prepares himself for the inevitable _hello_ , Atem breezes right past him. 

Kaiba blinks, shaken, and wheels around, watching Atem walk directly into the throng of people on the sidewalk. He blends in effortlessly, save for the tips of his hair, which stood out colorfully at shoulder-level, and Kaiba continues to stare at him incredulously until he’s walked so far away that he’s become a small, tri-colored blip in the distance. 

His body catches up with his mind and he starts to chase after Atem furiously.

After texting him all morning, Atem had walked right past him!

_Hope to see you soon._

Yeah fucking right!

Kaiba recovers the lost distance quickly, walking with aggravated, long footsteps, and he shoulders his way past other pedestrians. He watches Atem duck into a small diner and without checking the name of the location, he storms the front door and finds himself inside a thoroughly unimpressive fast food chain restaurant. 

The room opens into a wide reception, expanding into broad seating areas on both sides of the open room. The walls are sickly yellow, the accents a garish shade of olive green, and the entire place is saturated with the scent of hamburger grease and cheap cleaning solvents. 

The scent hits Kaiba’s refined nose like a fist. It makes his lip curl and his stomach clench painfully in revulsion, but he’s more determined to find Atem than repulsed by the fast food. His eyes scan over the people seated at the tables and he even inspects the waiting staff, desperate for any glimpse of that familiar face, all the while unsure whether he’ll be relieved or frustrated to see him. 

He finally spots Atem out of the corner of his eye and watches him approach a waitress in a tacky green uniform that matches the hideous paint on the walls. He recognizes her as the same woman from Gamble Coffee.

She works here, he thinks contemptuously, imagining with petty satisfaction that it can’t be very nice to date someone who smells like hamburger grease. 

Evidently, the stench doesn’t bother Atem. 

Kaiba’s heart sinks to his stomach when Atem stretches onto the tips of his toes to embrace her. 

One of his hands drifts to the curve of her slender waist and Seto turns away with a grimace before he has to witness anything else.

What the hell is he doing here? Why had he even bothered trying to follow Atem when it was clear he didn’t want to be seen?

Before Atem could turn and spot him, Kaiba wheels around and marches out of the hamburger joint, feeling like a dog with his tail tucked between its legs. Once he’s outside, the balmy air suffocates him and he sags against the door, panting to catch his breath, nauseous and upset and _angry_.

He’s done with Atem. None of this is worth his time. 

* * *

Kaiba works through the rest of the evening. He refuses to acknowledge anything that saw in the afternoon— if it feels like there’s something brimming beneath the surface of his own calmness, he refuses to acknowledge that either. He’s methodic and disconnected as he works through his paperwork, sorting, filing, labeling without thinking, and as he checks his email for the sixth time that hour, he realizes that it’s been an entire day since he’s last eaten.

His stomach rumbles angrily, finally woken from its hibernation and panging with a vengeance, and he hastily texts Mokuba without looking too closely.

 _ **Seto:**_ Get ready. leaving work. Where do you want to go fr dinner?

He doesn’t bother correcting his mistakes, far more preoccupied with finishing his review of the production reports before leaving the office. It’s unsurprising that Mokuba responds quickly, but he waits until he’s finished to check his phone. 

_**Atem:**_ ? 

Kaiba pales. Oh no. 

_**Atem:**_ Are you asking me on a date?

Oh _shit_.

He stares at the contact name with a sense of overwhelming panic. Mokuba’s name is always at the top of his contact list. Now Atem’s name is there, and he texted the wrong person. 

_**Seto:**_ No.

 _ **Seto:**_ It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to send that to you.

 _ **Atem:**_ I have to admit I’m disappointed. 

Kaiba stares at his phone until dots dance in his glazed-over vision and his grip tightens until the screen distorts around the edges. He reads and re-reads the message over and over again, until the words become a jumbled mess and don’t make any sense. 

Then he reads it one more time with astounding clarity:

 _ **Atem:**_ I have to admit I’m disappointed.

Hot fury overwhelms his every sense. 

_Just how far are you going to take this pathetic game?! I know you’re lying,_ he types viciously, before he realizes that texting Atem won’t give him the same satisfaction that yelling at him would. 

He can’t see Atem’s reactions through the screen. He can’t see if tears spring to those wide, lovely eyes or if his chin begins to quiver once he realizes that he’s in trouble, or if he tries to lie pathetically to salvage the situation. 

Kaiba wants to see Atem’s eyes widen, his cheeks darken with hideous shame and guilt that he had been _caught._ He wants to hear him gasp sharply and struggle to find the words to apologize, choking over his own clumsy apologies, being forced to admit that he’s a fool and a loser and he lost at his own damn game—

Without caring that his progress is lost and an entire afternoon’s work is effectively wasted, Kaiba forcibly shuts down his laptop and storms out of his office. He barely has the sense to grab his coat before leaving, barking into the microphone embedded in the KC button on his lapel that he needs a car at the front of KC HQ in five seconds, stat.  


* * *

He’s too furious to take the elevator. His angry footsteps echo around the stairwell and he takes two steps at a time, quickly scaling the two floors it takes to reach the boutique. 

Atem’s standing behind his desk, sorting through stacks of invoices. For a moment, the sight of him is enough to make Seto’s chest constrict painfully, overwhelmed by longing —for what? He doesn’t know— enough to momentarily forget about his rage. Atem looks up at his presence and blinks, before a bright smile spreads across his face, and he looks so genuinely delighted that Kaiba desperately wants to believe it’s genuine.

Then he thinks about the brown-haired woman, the waitress in a short green dress, and his longing subsides and it’s replaced by a raw anger and a strange ache in his chest.

Atem’s megawatt smile just makes his heart pang all the more painfully. 

“Kaiba! I wasn’t expecting y—”

“Save it,” Seto interrupts, crossing the room with lengthy footsteps and approaching the desk. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Up close, he could see the dark, bold line of black ink artfully applied around his eyes, catches the faint scent of warm, spiced cologne when Atem draws closer, gravitating toward the desk. He places his hands on the desk and leans into them, drawing close enough for Seto to count his individual eyelashes and to see the wrinkle form between his eyebrows and to notice that he isn’t wearing the nose ring today.

“What’s going on?”

“ _What’s going on?_ ” Kaiba lets out a bark of incredulous laughter. “Let’s start with how you insist on wasting my time. Then we’ll work our way down to the part where I tell you that I know all about your sick little game, and that you’ve _lost._ ”

Atem’s eyes widen and become vulnerable. “What? What are you talking about?” 

“Stop playing stupid, your game is over.”

“ I don’t understand, Kaiba—”

“I _saw_ you last week!” Kaiba shouts, bringing his palms down on the surface of the desk. A pen quivers and rolls off the ledge and Atem flinches at the sound of it hitting the ground. “What the hell did you take me for? I’m not an idiot! You’ve been lying to me this entire time! Well, the game’s over. You lose. I know all about you and your girlfriend.” 

He spits the last word as if it tastes putrid in his mouth and watches the confusion light Atem’s face. His full lips part and fall open, forming a tantalizing ‘ _o_ ,’ and his brows draw together in surprise. 

“Girlfriend?” he repeats hollowly, looking increasingly confused. “What are you talking about? I don’t have a girlfr—”

He suddenly stiffens and his voice becomes dangerously sharp. “My girlfriend. You must mean Anzu.”

“Whatever. I don’t care what her name is,” Kaiba growls, glaring to the side. He misses Atem’s darkening expression. “I don’t want to know anything about her. The point is that I know about your little ga—”

Atem cuts him off.

“Where did you see us together?” he demands.

Even though Kaiba knows that he was right, he is always right, the confirmation of Atem’s betrayal stung. 

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know,” he sneers spitefully, returning his gaze to Atem’s handsome face. “You _saw_ me that day at the coffee place, Gamble—”

“Oh my god.”

Atem’s voice raises a pitch and cracks mid-sentence. He repeats himself incredulously and begins muttering under his breath. Seto only catches the end of a distraught sentence. 

“...was right….”

“What?”

He isn’t prepared for the sudden intensity behind that livid glare. 

Atem’s furious. “Are you kidding me? You really were following Yugi!”

Now it’s Kaiba’s turn to feel confused, and he gives Atem a strange look. “What the hell is a Yugi?”

“He’s my identical twin brother!”

And everything goes to shit.

* * *

Kaiba stares incredulously. The words ring hollowly in his ears. They don't make sense. Twin brother?

_“What?”_

“My twin brother, Yugi,” Atem repeats impatiently. “You were _following_ him! He knew about this and he warned me! I can’t believe I didn’t believe him!”

Underneath his heated glare, Kaiba suddenly feels very small for the first time in his adult life. 

“You have a twin brother. A twin.”

He’s having trouble processing the words. 

“Yes!” Atem cries angrily, and he stands up, shoulders squared and tense. “I have a _fucking_ twin!”

“You’re lying!” Kaiba shoots back, scowling down at Atem and trying to remain composed and angry, despite the flush of embarrassment creeping over his cheeks. He towers over Atem, attempting to use his height to his advantage, but Atem’s glare holds him rooted to his spot. “You’re making that up to hide that I caught you! Admit it!”

“I am _not!_ ” 

Atem shoves his hand into the pocket of his painfully tight black jeans and jerks his phone out, holding it in front of Seto’s face and waving it furiously. “Is this part of the so-called lie too?!” 

His hand is quivering with the force of his emotions. Seto steadies Atem’s hand, his long fingers easily circling his wrist, and squints at the screen. His heated anger is quickly replaced by growing cold, a spike of icy horror and the distinct feeling that he’s falling in place or the world is rushing around him. 

_Oh no._

Atem’s screensaver is a picture of himself and a similar-looking boy. Seto immediately recognizes him as the doe-eyed boy from Gamble Coffee. He had blamed the strange appearance of his eyes on an eyeliner technique, blamed his own lack of observation for not previously noticing certain details about Atem, like the piercings and the slightly different hairstyle, and he could see now that it’s the _other_ boy, this _Yugi_ , who wears a delicate golden hoop in his nostril.

It was this Yugi he had followed the entire week.

This _Yugi_ has a girlfriend, had kissed the girl with the brown hair at the cafe, has the girlfriend with the tacky green uniform... 

_Oh shit._

Seto runs a hand through his hair. His fingers are trembling with a mix of relief and anxiety.

“I can explain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking around this long and to everyone who encouraged me to keep writing this fic! Please leave a review! ❤️ ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و


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